Chapter 2

Larke waited for a full half of a glass after sunset before beginning his climb out the window of his upper garret bedroom onto a nearby branch of the great spreading chestnut tree. It was a great, tall and wide tree and he could cross the small mill stream on a thick sturdy branch that sprung out from the huge central trunk. From there, he could easily move to another branch that overhung the village dining tables and the small central circle with its council meeting fire pit. Underneath this great tree, the elders of the village would soon be gathering, if they were in fact all not already there. Most of the villager were there already seated at one of the wooden benches along the four long tables. Everyone was pouring drinks from a keg of what smelled to be freshly brewed light summer ale. Brom the Brewer was a meek obedient yes-man to his older brother, but he was an excellent brewer.

Sprawled flat upon the branch, the curious lad risked pushing aside some smaller leafy branches that obscured his downward view. He soon spied Havril and Brom by the kegs, filling and refilling their large carved ebony wood mugs. The village meeting, with their guests the master-trader and his flatboat crews, would be a long one as everyone would want to discuss the issues of the day. Havril would undoubtedly want to firmly control the meeting making sure that his sway over the Village Council was not challenged. His brother, Larke’s step-uncle Brom, would more quietly, but equally firmly, support his blood kin in all matters, both great and trifling. The pair was quite inseparable, either when at their respective labors or while at rest. Thick as thieves the pair of brothers were, by either day or night. Many in the village muttered behind closed doors that the deeds of neither of them was honorable enough to stand up to scrutiny during the full light of day, particularly how the trade-shares of the village silver were kept and spent!

Because he was technically still an apprentice, and having not yet been acclaimed as a man by the matrons, Larke, by the long-standing rules of the village, was unable to speak before the bonfire circle. Technically, even being present for a meeting of the Village Council was usually impermissible, but from the size of the crowd below that particular rule wasn’t being strictly enforced tonight, probably due to the additional presence of their guests, the river men.

For most of the long evening, the meeting consisted of very little sound and fury and quite a good bit of needless worrying about what our newly warring kingdom neighbors were up to. Many villagers feared that the conflict would spread, perhaps even as far south as Mórdheath, despite the fact that the trouble was at least 150 leagues away from us. Still more irksome was the endless debate about how to spend various trade-monies that weren’t yet in their hands. They were all planning a chicken feast from eggs that had not even hatched yet!

Larke wanted at times to laugh, but for most of the evening he was quite bored. Havril was going to hold tight onto the village purse, today and tomorrow, even if the river itself was about to flow waters of pure silver. Much of the crowd below shared Larke’s boredom and after a few hours the audience began to thin out until toward the end only about twenty villagers and the traveling priest remained below Larke’s leafy perch. Now, he was certain, that the discussions were about to get much more interesting and he decided to stay yet a while longer, but little in fact did occur for the next hour that was of interest to him. Then, just as the lad was about to quit his stealthy surveillance and quietly retreat from the gathering, his crafts-mistress at last rose up to speak to the remaining assembly, which did include all of the senior crafters and elders of importance, including the five Village Council members and also the matrons of the Women’s Council of Three.

“Now that it’s just us adults here along with all of the people that matter, or that care, let’s discuss a pair of vital problems, one old ... one brand new. Seeming unconnected, but in truth they are of a kind together, one soon to be inseparable from the other. The first is of course my exceptional apprentice Larke ... and all of our other problems both brand new and old bear the shadow of this lad at their heart.” Not a bad sort of start, and for Frigyth, who tended to be extraordinarily blunt when speaking, this introduction was even quite subtle. Speaking in plain measured terms, instead of one of her usual bombasts, she now had their interest and attention.

“Let us not discuss that damned boy!” Havril bellowed out, throwing the contents of his beer mug into the still roaring bonfire in a show of disgust.

“Let the mistress speak,” one of the more neutral elders stated, several other folks murmuring in agreement, and everyone began to sit forward in their seats, paying closer attention. So this is what Mistress Frigyth had meant by piercing a long-overdue blister, Larke thought with a smile as he too leaned down a bit further from his leafy perch. His hearing was very good, exceptional perhaps, but he didn’t want to miss a single word or nuance.

“The lad was a curse put upon this village the day he was born,” Havril sputtered, throwing his arms about wildly in growing fury as he yelled swaying just a bit unsteady on his feet, as he’d made a good many trips to the ale barrel that evening. “He’s a curse, I say! From the very Gods to us all and none of us shall prosper until the damned Doóc pered’nal hornungsunu nothus has been purged from our village!” The assembled villagers all gasped at the usage of the old church tongue, which was virtually never used in commonplace discussion. Even Brom had the good sense to shake his head slightly and then turn his head to spit, and make the signs to avert evil.

The elder-word Doóc was quite bad enough, and Larke had certainly heard it quite often, and for most of his life - it just meant bastard ... but with the worst sort of connotation. Pered’nal wasn’t any sort of improvement on the situation either, but he’d heard that ancient word before too, meaning something like half-breed, usually in the rude context of an unholy human-monster mating. In comparison, hornungsunu wasn’t quite so bad, merely meaning a person who was ‘unbound’, without blood kin. Finally, with the addition of the last forbidden word, nothus, literally ‘an abomination unto the Gods’, the unmistakable conclusion was that Larke’s very existence was a travesty to the Divine and he ought to be destroyed just for the public good! Something to be killed or destroyed upon sight with no more regret than for a swamp roach!

Saying ‘God Damn’ was merely minor blasphemy ... saying nothus and calling upon the Gods to Uncreate that which they had made was at least a hundred times worse, if not a thousand! Taken all together, it was clear that Larke’s step-father resented every second of the boy’s existence!

There it was, out in the open at last! Larke sighed, perhaps just a bit more loudly than he intended. Fortunately, everyone below him around the camp fire was equally startled and in the uproar his small outburst went unnoticed.

It was no secret that his young mother, while engaged to the miller, had an affair or perhaps even a regular reoccurring relationship with one of the Yelfen race. Behavior such as this was far from uncommon, nor against any moral or written law. ‘Rites of the Seasonal Moon’ between humans and their Yelfen neighbors were certainly frequent enough, occurring on the three major moon festivals of every year. Two were held under the full moons of the Spring and Fall equinoxes, the third on the new moon of the eve of the longest summer day of the year. Women (and not a few curious girls) from both races had indulged at least once during their lives, if not regularly. Such meetings were in fact codified in both village and Yelfen common law, and also in the signed articles of the peace treaty between the two local cultures, written nearly a hundred years ago at the time of the founding of this village. Such intercourse, socially and sexually, had enjoyed a very long unbroken tradition ever since and the peace between the races had been upheld.

Nor was this custom the least bit peculiar or unusual in other lands. Their far more northern neighbors up near the border of Heldane, with other Yelfen lands in Forests of Leodewude, had similar rituals of even far older cultural precedent. Interracial sex was not the taboo in this rather commonplace occurrence of relations between the races ... it was the very exceptional result of this one particular coupling, Larke’s conception and birth!

It worked both ways, for men and women of each race, allowing each of them to make a tiny, but ritualistic erotic peace-weaving between the two neighboring peoples. What was different ... the unthinkable, quite impossible thing was that Larke’s mother had somehow became pregnant. A consequence that had never once before occurred through the age of man!

Oddly, the visiting priest wasn’t the least bit shocked or surprised.

“As I told you on that very morning, twenty-three years ago, as Micene lay there in that bed giving birth,” the old priest said, now rising to his feet to speak. “This very impossibility, that the union of an Yelfen man and a human female could not only produce a pregnancy, accounted by every wise man and woman to be an impossibility, but also deliver a viable live birth, is not impossible, therefore it is in accordance with the will, and laws of the Gods. No, this clearly cannot be a curse from our Gods, banished and seemingly already forgotten as your lack of faith clearly shows ... but instead something else, new and special. Something wondrous from the hands of the very Weaver’s themselves! Nothing, even the so-called impossible, is forbidden to them! This was a gift from them – not a curse!” There were many murmurs of agreement, half of the remaining assembly perhaps?

“No, there was no curse done on that day or any other since,” one of the elderly matrons said, standing to join the priest in agreement. Her voice was old but clear and Larke could tell immediately that it belonged to Ermingra, the Mistress of Healing and the longtime village medicus. She was also most senior of the matrons on the Women’s Council and her words always carried heavy weight equal to her years in counsel, but often still in vain. She depended heavily on the medicines and other physic created by Larke and his craft-mistress and he often assisted her. “The only offense committed that day by man or God was when you stabbed your dagger into her pregnant belly in a vain attempt to abort her child, even as the first pains of childbirth had begun. Drunken then, as you often are now, you missed the child but gave her very death wound! That she died of that wound, taking her last breath even as Larke’s head emerged to first take his own air, marked you that day as her very murderer. It is you that bear her blood on your hands, that mark your own curse, it is nothing of the boy’s doing ... and never has a word of regret passed your lips, so ever shall that curse of your own making remain upon you!”

“Cursed he is and cursed he shall ever remain!” Havril thundered, enraged now beyond reason. “Never has there been a pered’nal and never shall I ever repent that I tried to prevent his baleful passage into this world. No! Indeed, if the Gods were still here with us, I’m certain that they would instead praise my adherence to their laws, and I rejoice that I, at least, had the will to uphold them!”

“Tell me then,” the old priest exclaimed in mock amazement, “explain to me with your vast knowledge of the written and spoken wisdom of the Gods, where it says that the highly improbable but clearly not impossible half-breed boy is a mortal offense against all of creation itself? Did the Gods not state that even the Eotenas, the savage monsters of the wilderness, have their rightful places in this world?” The furious miller had no clever words to rebut this wisdom, and despite the excess of ale that he’d drunk, he somehow managed to put something of a leash upon his temper.

Mistress Frigyth smiled and continued, certain that a growing current of social support was flowing in her direction, “Larke is soon to become a man of twenty and three years and yet, by the will of the matrons seated here, he is still to be accounted as a boy. How is this of good reason?”

“Well, he is still rather small of stature,” one of the other matrons mumbled in reply. It was a weak argument and Larke could tell that it was at best a convenient excuse. In fairness, Larke didn’t look like a man grown into his twenties. He was still slightly smaller in stature than many of the teenaged lads and his build was wiry, one of quickness and darting speed rather than the usual masculine muscle. At a glance, a stranger would take him for a boy of no more than sixteen. That was definitely part of his Yelfen heritage, the lad was certain. Bearing the partial blood of an immortal (or nearly so) race, perhaps he too was aging but very slowly to full maturity, which might not occur for years or even decades still.

“Irrelevant!” She shouted, raising her hands up into the air in supplication. “Is he this very day man enough to perform every task and duty assigned him, including the very hardest assignments the council can find to offer? He can ... and does, and has done so for at least the last two years, if not longer. That he is not accorded as a man in the eyes of this village is an utter travesty!”

“That will happen over my dead body!” Havril declared, making the upraised clinched fist of an oath-taking as he spoke. A few voices murmured quietly in agreement and with great reluctance these most senior supporters of Havril were marked, and bid to stand to officially support their statements. The opposition was a minority of those assembled, but these ill-wishers included the other two matrons of the Women’s Council ... and it was their votes alone that really mattered.

“Redmund,” Mistress Frigyth called out, “you are our Hunts-Master and one of the most respected voices on our village council, rise forth and speak! Who in truth brings home the most caught game, and rarely ever enters the village gate without something to bring to our cookpots?” The hunter was caught flatfooted and more than a bit reluctant to answer, but called upon in the village circle he was bound to speak, and truthfully.

“Wyverna is perhaps my best hunter and I cannot remember a time she returned from a hunt empty-handed, but I catch both your point and meaning. Although Larke was not given to me for further crafts-training after his first year of basic weapons instruction as a boy of thirteen, the lad is indeed extremely skilled at the arts of the hunt, and perhaps ... probably, is our best at stalking and taking larger game, like deer and wild boar ... or handling affairs of honor with the Yelfen hunters.” The words punished him, but the hunter was bound to offer his honest truth, and he had quite spoken thusly.

“I concur,” another voice belonging to another of the most senior hunters, Grahma, added, bearing the palm of his scarred right hand up in truth-oath. “No man or lad, me included, has produced such a rich harvest from these fenlands or the great swamp itself ... and furthermore, no other hunter including myself, has gone across our river so often, bringing home coup and much honor to our entire village. Even our Yelfen neighbors respect him greatly and all have knelt to his spear, offering him naught but respect – as they would a true man and a great warrior of either race! As a hunter and proud warrior, I must respect and also honor his skill. Declare him to be a man this very night! Declare his apprenticeship completed! To do anything other would be a grave dishonor to all of us who put the meat into our cook-kettles!” The cries of ‘hear-hear’ were loud and nearly, but not quite, unanimous, but the two matrons were unmoved ... but at least they had the decency to be visibly embarrassed.

“As my sworn apprentice,” Frigyth continued, “he has already served me longer than any other prior novice, indeed he has been a master of my craft for several years already. Often now, I find myself heeding his instruction as if he were in fact the teacher! In truth, I have nothing left to teach him, yet his skills grow by the season. If the matter were settled properly, I’d be tending to his herbs and apprentices and be quite satisfied to do so for my remaining years. That he has not left this ungrateful village is a wonder that I remain daily thankful for!”

“And a fact that I daily curse! Oh, that the boy would go! That, I would be eternally grateful for!” Havril bellowed, turning his back on the herbal mistress in contempt to once again refill his ale mug.

“Let me speak clearly and bluntly so there is no possible misunderstanding.” She calmly continued, pointing her long sharp finger at each one of the reticent elders, who had all now retaken their seats. “My stored herbal jars in my workshop stock over four hundred ingredients for the many lotions, potions and poultices that I produce daily. My herb gardens grow just twenty-two of those plants that my female apprentices can tend in safety within our walls. All of those other necessities, nearly four hundred of them, must be gathered from outside. Some of the others can be collected in relative safety from the river or nearby bogs or our few dry crop fields, but most, at least three hundred ingredients, must come from the swamp. Sometimes from far and extremely dangerous sections, days’ travel from here, or from across the other great river that marks the boundary of Yelfen lands.” She was not exaggerating the dangers involved with gathering, and she wisely paused for a long moment to let her audience reflect on this.

“I must emphasize this!” She cried out, nearly shouting. “That most of the recipes for physics that I possess and can make, require items that neither I nor my four female apprentices can obtain on our own! Think about that! Those healing ointments that our healer Mistress Ermingra uses and that the master-trader so urgently wants ... require items only found near Yelfen lands or at places several days of dangerous travel away from here deeper into the heart of the swamp, where the greatest dangers and monsters can be found ... regions that even our boldest hunters fear to travel, and rightly so. Before I had Larke, I relied upon two skilled hunters to escort me or my most experienced girls in safety, and there was still often danger. Shall we require their aid yet again once Larke has gone? That’s two hunters we’d then again need, good ones that can fight full grown boars or swamp lizards without fear, that won’t be bringing home meat for your tables or hides to earn our village coin. Can we spare such skilled providers once more? Just two years ago the Village Council told me ‘no‘, that none could be spared even another day longer. Shall our meals this winter again become as meager as they were last year? Or five years ago, when the crop-mold took most of the wild rice? Shall our children eat half-rotten scraps again this winter too, while the rest of us once more chew leather scraps, vainly trying to tame the pangs of hunger? What say you all to this?”

Even the two stubborn matrons could sense that the mood of the village was getting dark and that their continued intractability was becoming increasingly unwelcome. Still they would not yield.

“I shall mention one last small but most significant and as-of yet unsaid fact.” The priest sadly added, rising again to his feet as he prepared to leave the assembly. “When I was a much younger man, just newly appointed as a priest to the church at Mórdheath, I first took this long and difficult river trip east, to visit and bring comfort to each of the river towns and villages, this one being the furthest and hardest to reach. Then, perhaps a bit over thirty years ago, this swamp village was prospering and there was little or no concern over having enough harvest to survive the very mild winters here. The shadow of hunger didn’t hang over this community then, as it does now. Also, the village prospered, numbering if memory serves me well over three hundred and fifty souls. I was here again too, that very day twenty-three years ago when Larke’s mother Micene died, or rather was murdered in her birthing bed, and the population was much about the same. A few more or just a few less, but comparable to before. Today from the river docks, I beheld a much smaller parish than on my last visit just five years ago. What are your numbers now? Half of that amount? Indeed, certainly no more than two hundred souls now ... and the specter of hunger threaten even these reduced mouths! What shall it yet become in the future, should, as the master-miller desires, the village expels its best hunter and gatherer? Even less food for the kitchen and much less available medicine, or so I now understand. What hence shall become of ye in those yet future days?”

The old priest made a long pause here and tried to lock eyes with each of the truculent elders, but they each averted his gaze. “Yes, I too now see this so-called curse, and I predict for the future yet more hunger and more hardship for the increasingly fewer souls that shall remain here! The boat-captain told me earlier that no fewer than five villagers today have already sought to take passage with us back west, down the river when we leave. There shall be more in the months and years ahead until eventually naught but old ruined timbers shall exist where this village once stood. I beseech you to abjure this curse and banish it ... by accepting the lad fully into this community, and your hearts. By this means only shall the curse be broken and prosperity restored! That, I feel in my very heart, is truly the will of the Gods!”