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Chapter Eight

Druadaen slowly brought his mount to a halt, turned in the saddle and took a last look behind. The sheer sides of Dunarra’s wallway and its uniform towers were just barely visible over the highlands to the south. It was, in fact, the view he’d grown up with. Those distance-dimmed, angular shapes were his earliest memories of looking—and longing—toward where his parents traveled to do their mysterious work, where almost all their books came from, where traders from as far as Teurodn converged, and where all his boundless hopes and dreams had resided.

He turned his back on the dim shapes on the southern horizon and urged the horse into a slow forward walk. To the right was the stream that ran just east of their house. It was now just a half-overgrown hump of blackened beams and sprawled foundation stones.

It was his first return to the place where his life had gone awry. He had not exactly avoided it, but he’d had no reason to pass it, either. His bordering work along Connæar’s frontier had never brought him closer than twenty leagues. But heading north from the wallway out of Aedmurun had been the fastest route further north, so here he was.

He glanced at what was left of the house in which he had grown up…and felt nothing. No surprise: he had expected it to be an anticlimactic return, and it was.

He urged his horse into a faster walk, past fields where harvest preparations were under way.

* * *

The missions that had taken him into the countryside of other nations had usually been hurried—not to say perilous—episodes requiring constant watchfulness. But that wasn’t the case as his northwesterly journey would only gradually angle closer to the border. Consequently, he began passing through communities of a type he had never had the time to visit.

Although Connæar became a protectorate of Dunarra when its royal family was systematically exterminated late in the Second Age of the First Consentium, the Propretoriate had been careful not to impinge upon the political or cultural life of their neighbor. The close association had certainly benefited the military and bureaucracy of the much smaller nation, but it had neither the resources nor the resolve to maintain the standards that prevailed over its southern border. Here, every town was a unique entity with wild variations in the quality, cost, and availability of lodging and meals.

Druadaen noticed a similar degree of variation in Connæar’s defenses, particularly in the design—and condition—of its fortifications. Not only was the emphasis on castles rather than forts, but the construction was more crude. The architecture was only indifferently informed by the main strategic objective: to arrest incursions by either human or Bent invaders. And although the garrisons and their commanders were always amicable when he sought advice on local lodgings, they also seemed relieved to see him go, as if his mere presence was simultaneously an intrusion and an indictment.

However, these modest measures of similarity between Connæar and Dunarra abruptly ended when Druadaen crossed the border into Teurodn.

He had certainly expected differences. Although Teurodn was another centuries-old ally of Dunarra, the roots of its peoples, its culture, and its language were all quite different. As a strong central monarchy that forbade serfdom and indentured servitude, it was one of the more enlightened nations of Ar Navir. On the other hand, disputes ranging from affairs of honor to irresolvable legal disputes were frequently settled by melees between not only the direct antagonists but their blood-oathed supporters.

Druadaen’s descent from the low mountains straddling the border of Connæar and Teurodn also signified his arrival at the western limit of human habitation. According to his fellow Outriders, the Graveyard’s borderers were ready folk who lived rough lives and came from humble origins. Almost every one of them was, or traced their ancestry to, persons expelled from the more tamed countryside to the east or the descendants of refugees who started out as border-dwelling squatters but were absorbed by the slow westward advance that had new squatters always settling a little further out upon the stark grasslands of the Plain of Grehar.

He had thought that living at the fringes most vulnerable to Bent raiders would instill a greater desire for superior protection and the ability to defend themselves during those periodic attacks. But as his horse crested and then shuffled casually down the last hillside into Teurodn, he found himself staring at the local version of a stronghold.

Its ill-fitting gray stones were so undressed that orderly courses of them were only evident along the bottom of the walls and at a few other key junctures. The rest had been pieced in and supported (one could hardly call it “reinforced”) with what looked more like wall plaster, not mortar. Druadaen tried to imagine what its ground plan would look like, gave up as quickly as he’d begun.

The physical details of the castle didn’t seem to have much impact on the morale of its complement, however. They seemed as alert and ready as any other garrison. Of course, it was probably the most impressive construction they had ever seen, with the possible exception of the village temple. Druadaen scanned for that other edifice and, when he finally detected it, he decided that no, it was definitely not more impressive than the “castle.”

As he reached the outskirts of the village, he was peripherally aware that its inhabitants were staring openly as he rode slowly toward the temple. In addition to being an extremely humble structure, it was also mystifying; he could not discern what gods or pantheon it was dedicated to. To the best of his knowledge, few Teuronds dreamwalked in the Creedlands of the Helpers. Most of them remained devoted to the pantheon of the Nyrthulean peoples who had settled—or, according to some histories, invaded—the northern extents of Ar Navir. But this temple did not seem to be aligned with those, either.

That indeterminacy proved to be the clue to understanding the temple’s actual role; it was, for want of a better term, a shared space for any number of devotions. It probably did not welcome all creeds: some deities would not abide the presence of another’s sacrists or symbology. But Druadaen saw the unmistakable side building that no doubt served as a rude epiphanium, just as the architecturally distinctive broad steps and hollow offering stelae indicated that it was a temple of some kind.

As he rode past, he noticed a long stretch of open land behind it. Well, he revised quickly, not entirely open: ironically, here at the approaches to the Graveyard he had finally encountered an actual graveyard.

Druadaen had heard about them, of course. There had been some in Connæar. But they had been small; the greater the proximity to Dunarra, the more profound its cultural influences. Within a dozen leagues of the wallway, devotion to the deities of the Helper pantheon prevailed and the rites were close kin to those practiced just over the border, particularly those pertaining to the deceased: cremation and scattering the ashes upon moving water. Graveyards were more common the further north one went, but remained comparatively infrequent until one crossed the border into Teurodn.

Druadaen had seen a few graveyards in the distance as a child, and more recently as an Outrider, but this was the first time he was close enough to make out the individual headstones, stelae, mausoleums, and other grave markers. He had always labored to keep an open mind toward the practice of burial, but now, seen up close, he could neither dismiss nor suppress his innate reaction: that it was morbid, ghoulish, and more than a bit primitive.

His gaze traveled from the weather-bitten monuments to a restive crowd that was gathering where the fields touched the grange on the village’s outskirts. As its numbers and general level of agitation grew, he wondered if, perhaps, the difference in death rites was a reflection of the difference in the lives these people lived. The extraordinary number of children, the equally extraordinary number who died before they came of age, the number of hobbling, untoothed ancients who were not even seventy years old: death or its harbingers were everywhere he looked. Even the masses of children were a grim, preemptive adaptation to the numbers that would be taken by disease, injury, infection, hunger, and mishap.

Maybe, then, the tradition of burial, of graveyards, was just another accommodation of the omnipresence of death, a means of resisting the physical parting of all the family, friends, and neighbors who were constantly passing into the creedlands. He imagined that reliance upon the comfort and reassurance of dreamwalks were just that much more critical in such a place.

As if in answer to his speculation, the crowd ahead let out a ragged chorus of angry shouts as two figures broke away, running toward the fields. One was young and swift; the other was gray-haired and limping with the steady regularity of an accustomed infirmity.

Druadaen turned his horse in the direction they were running, gently spurred it into a fast walk. He was curious, but he also reminded himself that this was not his culture, not his community, and so, not his business.

The crowd was rapidly gaining on the two fleeing figures, but not because of the older one’s limp. Rather, the younger one—small and short-legged—was losing ground because he lacked the stamina to keep running. The old fellow turned—frayed robes and long beard swirling—and began hobbling backward, facing the mob while remaining between them and his young companion. He raised a gnarled wooden staff in a gesture of either physical defense or mantic warding; Druadaen could not determine which.

“Stand aside!” one of the mob’s leaders shouted.

“You mean to harm him,” the old fellow yodeled back.

“That’s no business of yours, gritch.”

Gritch: provincial slang for a “green witch.” So he was a nativist, Druadaen concluded as he neared the back of the crowd, which was starting to encircle the pair. But those who started flanking around from the rear saw Druadaen and stopped, uncertainty writ plain on their faces.

Their hush spread to the front of the crowd. Whispering took its place. Heads turned, among them, those of the leaders. “What’s your business here?” an older man asked, frowning at Druadaen’s armor and gear; as an Outrider, he was not accoutred in Dunarran standard.

Druadaen simply shrugged.

“Well, move along, then,” another said. But it was a tentative suggestion, not a command.

Druadaen made no response. He simply remained in his saddle, watching.

As he’d hoped, the mere presence of an unidentified soldier sitting on a large horse to the rear had forestalled any slide into ungoverned frenzy and now kept it from restarting. Watchful eyes often were most unnerving—and powerful—when the identity and potentials of the watcher were unknown.

The leaders turned wary backs upon him, shaking rag-wrapped clubs at the youngster cowering behind the nativist. “We’ve got some nice branches for you right here, boy.”

“You shall not harm him,” the old man said in a surprisingly sharp and firm voice.

“They will if I say!” shrieked a woman.

“And who are you, hag?”

“His mother,” she wailed.

The boy ducked his head in shame or dismay or both. The old man straightened, eyes squinting as if his vision was failing. “And you—you—would subject him to—?”

“She’d teach him the meaning of his choice before it’s too late,” a man roared. He waved yet another stick capped by a smeared rag. “A good beating might shock some sense into ’im!”

“Ya,” agreed another loudly. “And if not, well, he might as well get used to living covered in beast dung!”

Druadaen understood the stained bags and the rags, now.

The old man’s perplexity had transformed into haughty disdain. He seemed to grow half a foot as he stared down the mob. “Free animals do not live in their own filth. Only ‘domesticated’ boars—swine—do that.” Then he peered over their heads at the dingy cottages and tilting sheds at the edge of the town. “Of course, they may learn that habit from some of the breed that see fit to enslave them.”

The mutterings of the mob ebbed briefly, but when they rose again, they were low and dark. Outrage at one of their own had now widened to include the nativist. The leaders started edging forward, shaking the rags from their clubs.

Druadaen sighed. The mob’s desire to chastise and punish was stupid, but the nativist’s contempt and insults hadn’t been much better. They all deserved whatever they were about to do to each other…but the youngster’s desire to go with the old nativist seemed genuine, innocent.

Druadaen touched a spur to his horse’s flank. The sound of its slow forward walk froze the tableau just as combat was about to be joined.

The crowd parted before the charger, staring at Druadaen. And at his sword and armor. It was not the calculating assessment of possible attackers: more a somber recognition of the latent threat.

Druadaen let the horse proceed as slowly as it liked. Not because it gave people more time to get out of the way, but because each second that passed meant that the raised clubs lowered a little further, allowed rage to be replaced with cautious reassessment.

He reined the horse in gently when he was ten feet away from the speakers clustered at the front of the mob. “Has this young man broken a law?”

“Who are you to ask?” asked the most flush-faced of the group.

“Why should you care? Do you mean to keep this matter a secret?” Druadaen assessed the size of the crowd. “If so, you are going about it the wrong way.”

“He disrespects our traditions, going to live in the wilds, apprenticing to a gritch. He’ll probably become a beast himself!”

Druadaen nodded. “So, he has soiled your traditions and you mean to soil him for doing so? For choosing a different path?”

The mother’s head went back as she shouted through her sobs. “He is going to his doom, his eternal death, if he goes with that gritch!”

Druadaen frowned, glanced at the resolute, but softening face of the old man. “He does not look like an evil man, nativist or not.”

“I do not fear for my boy because of an old gritch,” the mother shouted impatiently. Heads in the crowd nodded.

Druadaen was not able to keep a frown off his face. “Then who is threatening your son?”

“If he adopts the old man’s ways,” said a short, wide-shouldered farmer who bore a strong resemblance to the woman, “we will not find him in any god’s creedland. He will be in the Great Tract of the gritches—er, druids,” the man finished, using the term common among those whose ancestry and idiom was sprinkled with echoes of the Uanseachan migrations of past millennia.

Druadaen shrugged. “The creedlands are not for all persons. Even consecrants say so, when pressed. They say the gods know this, and that it is by their wisdom and will that the Great Tract exists.”

“But we will not see him when we die,” the mother cried desperately. “He will not pass with us. He shall be gone forever!” She hid her wet face in chapped hands.

Druadaen nodded, made his voice as gentle as he could. “You seem to love him greatly.”

“We do,” the apparent uncle answered as she sobbed.

Druadaen stared at the dung they were holding “You’ve chosen strange ways to show love. Besides, you cannot know the final journey the boy begins with these steps. It is said that some who wander the Great Tract in their youth discover that once there, they finally hear the whisper of a god and so come to end their days in a creedland. And others who leave the epiphanium devoted to a god, and nightly dreamwalk in that creedland, ultimately realize that their deepest longing is for the unfettered freedom of the Great Tract. I am told that neither outcome is frequent, but they do occur.”

“And what is to become of my sweet boy,” the mother sniffled into her sodden sleeves, “wandering alone through trackless wilds, in both his waking and sleeping hours? What kind of life is it, running with wild beasts?” Her voice darkened. “Or what might be worse.”

Druadaen nodded somberly. “And still, there are worse fates than those.”

“Name one!” she snapped resentfully.

“To close one’s eyes and be happy not to dream at all,” he answered.

The uncle frowned. “And how could any being find happiness in that?”

Druadaen shrugged. “They might, if dreaming meant being trapped in the Wildscape.”

The silence after that statement seemed to grow more profound with every passing second. Maybe because his tone told them he knew—personally—whereof he spoke.

As the crowd’s quiet gave rise to restless movement and averted eyes, the nativist put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder and, nodding his thanks, slipped away into the sun-bleached posts and desiccated tangles of the dying vineyard that abutted the field.

As the two of them disappeared, the crowd began to drift away, back to their homely cottages and sheds. Several turned their backs and, probably believing themselves unobserved, made subtle warding signs. Druadaen waited until the field was empty, then turned his horse to the west and eased it into a walk.

Toward the scraggle-grassed Graveyard.


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