Lightning tore through the sky, filling the canyon with its light, and the roaring grom that walks always with that phenomena. The walls of the valley we traveled up, away from our homeland forever, held those rumbles in its draws and side canyons, only to throw them back with a vengeance.
Nyebopojar, that conflagration in the sky, cast conflicting shadows on the road and cliffs of the canyon. The rain was coming down hard, but thankfully, there was no gradeina in this storm. I could not have tolerated getting beaten by those icy stones from the sky. We moved through the maze of trees and rocks that marked the middle boundary of the Ovozyest, or Ovost as most call our land now. And the fury of the storm made it take on a look more like the borders of a hell, not a civilized nation.
Our mules and ponies were in a state of frenzy, desperately seeking every chance to lunge for safety. Around us ground bolts of lightning, called molyena in our tongue, struck the trees, the boulders, and even flat places where the rusty stains of iron deposits had collected from the runoff of the tailing piles all over the upper reaches of this gorge. We staggered each time the angry sky tossed down its furious concussions and blinding radiance. We who walked, for none are allowed t ride into Eizgnaneiyeh, the eternal exile, were nearly as rattled as our beasts. This storm was not the first of the summer night, nor did it promise to be the last. Regardless, the deadline to reach the top of this canyon, where the border lay, would not be adjusted.
Despite the dangers of the road and the storm, my mind kept wandering. I revisited the events of the past few months, those affairs which had led to the exile myself and some friends. Events that soon expanded to include others not directly involved those events. Some were now going Zagroneichnei with us, just for speaking out against our exile. And Jaochim Degviek Kolvano ez Bolnalthrak, the Tsaryoch ot Choelm, had been casually overthrown from his post, the second highest in the lands, for merely daring to speak on our behalf in the Dvoryets, that assembly of the governors of our people, those elected raveitalei we sent once every other year to propose laws and advise the Tsar.
Thinking of the Tsar, the ruler of all Karleeknie, gave me a bitter taste in my mouth. He was not just the one who had exiled us, he was also my Father. But the Kalykn who had raised me early in my life was not the person I had come back to from my fostering and time as a soldier in his army. He was under Kordar’s thumb, or more accurately, under the chains that priest had encouraged him to take up and weighed out for him.
To change as he did, it made me often wonder, what enchantments could cause such a transformation in personality. I would have made things worse, and spoken those thoughts at my trial and rite of exile. But luckily Grimdarzog and Joachim knew of my thoughts, and they and the others talked me out of it when I merely mentioned it. The old runecaster’s words had weighed the heaviest on my decision, appropriate as he was a weigher of chains.
“There are enchantments, and then there are enchantments, my little Nom. And the most powerful of all have no magic in them, but are words to stroke the pride of the one meant to be ensorcelled.” That was the judgment of the priest of the Zhakon, the Law of our people. And I heeded it, and the advice to silence.
A slip on the drowning cobbles of the road brought me back to the reality of the now. A time where any misstep would place me into one of the deadly traps or pits at the roads edge, or into the rising waters now creating a second stream in the canyon, on the paved trail that was proving more treacherous than father’s court. From here to the border itself was the deadliest area in our kingdom, laced with the snares of the defenses. Too many lives depended upon me now, here at the forward point of our party. And my wandering mind was endangering us all.
Joachim and I were there by custom, despite the fact that exiles have no ranks. For to the others, save one, we were the leaders of this group.
Further back in the string of karleekie and zvyer, was one most of us had wished had not accompanied us this night. Joachim’s daughter, Helqavina, had claimed right as her father’s heir to act as witness for the procession. She would turn back at the gates of exile and report to the Dvoyets on our departure. And in her arms she cradled the Skiepter ot Choelm, the mace held by the leaders of the ancient settlers of the first lands outside the Kotlovena, wrapped in gray cloth. She had vowed never to unfurl that cloth until her father’s return or death. She would rule the Choelm ochags and families not as his heir, but his regent.
I glanced back at her, seeking the face I had known since my youth, a face downcast and focused on the road before her. Because of the rain, I could not tell if she was crying still, as she had been when we started out at the rising of the sun. And would again at the border, I was sure. As would her father and I, and many of the others. Once, not all that long ago, we had sat for a night under the stars on the ramparts of her family’s zamok, and planned out a life together. But now we would be separated, forever. Or at least until we sat in the Halls of Penance.
I no longer know if I believe in the Halls, or the gods. My left had came up to my chest, as my fingers found there my vyereegie, the chains of my sorrows. If I lived out this night, they would be longer, and one link of that chain would be for the loss of my love. And in this day, when many wore their chains for any occasion, and swore by them, we who wore them only as acts of remembrance, mourning, or contrition in the ceremonies they were meant by the gods to be worn in were few and far between.
And as my fingers roamed my few, but real zvyelo, again my mind went walking in the past.
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