Children of the Music

By Lorinda J Taylor

Cut off from the rest of the world, the Land between the Mountains and the Sea had belonged to the Golden Eyed Siritoch since time before memory. Now these peaceful, pastoral people, who worship the life force under the guise of Music and who have no word for murder, are confronted by bearded, blue-eyed horse people from the south. The Epanishai entered the land from the Stone Corridors, themselves pursued by an even more warlike tribe, and they are looking for a place to claim as their own. They see the Siritoch as an affront to all their needs and aspirations. When two such people clash together, who has the most to lose?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lorinda J Taylor
• Release date: Aug 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370066971

Lorinda J Taylor

A former catalogue librarian, Lorinda J. Taylor was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and worked in several different academic libraries before returning to the place of her birth, where she now lives. She has written fantasy and science fiction for years but has only recently begun to publish. Her main goal is to write entertaining and compelling fiction that leaves her readers with something to think about at the end of each story.

Book preview

CHILDREN OF THE MUSIC

by

Lorinda J. Taylor

Bend to the reed’s tune –

Sing a new song

This is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

Cover illustration created by Lorinda J. Taylor.

Copyright © 2016 by Lorinda J. Taylor

The print edition of this tale includes two maps. Partly because the small e-reader format would most likely render these maps illegible, the author has omitted them here. They can be found online on her blog Ruminations of a Remembrancer (http://termitewriter.blogspot.com/p/maps_28.html) and the reader is welcome to print or download them from that source.

Table of Contents

Part One: The Reed’s Tune

Table of Characters in Part One

Chapter 1: The Spring among the Stones

Chapter 2: The First Wanderers

Chapter 3: The Return of Narlach

Chapter 4: ... Where the Music Leads

Chapter 5: Those Who Flee the Wind

Chapter 6: Galana

Chapter 7: Flute and Tree

Chapter 8: ... For they Are Human

Chapter 9: Orsia

Chapter 10: The Lamp

Chapter 11: The Trumpet

Chapter 12: Sanctuary

Chapter 13: The Voice of the God

Part Two: The New Song

Table of Characters in Part Two

Chapter 14: A Burial

Chapter 15: The Makers of Music

Chapter 16: The Bondman

Chapter 17: Daborno’s Legacy

Chapter 18: A Child of the Epanishai

Chapter 19: A Lost Lamb

Chapter 20: The Justice of Galana

Chapter 21: The Chieftain’s Brother

Chapter 22: Deliverance

Chapter 23: Despair

Chapter 24: The Music Will Sing Forever

Chapter 25: The Lawgiving

Chapter 26: The Song Begins

Author’s Note

Part One: The Reed’s Tune

Table of Characters in Part One

Inhabitants of the Village of Thran

Narlach: Headman of the village

Himrith: his wife

Parnom: elder son of Narlach and Himrith; a widower who lives with his parents

Veyaharn: 14-year-old daughter of Parnom

Sarvol: 8-year-old son of Parnom

Dorn: 12-year-old son of Parnom

Leyith: deceased daughter of Narlach and Himrith

Nebet: Leyith’s 7-year-old son, lives with the family of his uncle Chro

Ristros: younger son of Narlach and Himrith

Batharamol: his wife

Othach: 5-year-old son of Ristros and Batharamol

Harnos: 3-year-old son of Ristros and Batharamol

Leys: father of Himrith, great-grandfather of Nebet

Orlin: Leys’s nephew, son of his only brother (deceased), with whom Leys lives

Frin: Orlin’s son

Meridach: his wife

Chro: Brother of Nebet’s deceased father

Thanol: His wife, aunt-by-marriage to Nebet

Anthin: 10-year-old daughter of Chro and Thanol

Athandrol: 15-year-old son of Chro and Thanol

Unnamed: 3-year-old twin offspring of Chro and Thanol

Additional Inhabitants

Trachin: a village elder

Hilathol: female child, a goatherd

Lonith: a female child

Corith: a male child

Harmandrol: a male child

Xamnin: kinswoman of Chro

Clethras: an old man who recently died

Farmath: briefly mentioned villager

Hemareynol: briefly mentioned villager

Lahorach: briefly mentioned villager

Lapa: a billy goat

The First Wanderers

Pranet: one of the first to flee

Crismath: his wife

Wivros: leader (male) of the 2nd group of refugees

Merol: a male member of the 2nd group of refugees

Laravet: Merol’s sister

Unnamed: Laravet’s two children, aged three and five

The First Epanishai

Galno: Deceased Chieftain of the Clan of the Axe and Owl

Pola: His deceased wife

Daborno: Chieftain of the Clan of the Axe and Owl; son of Galno and Pola

Orsia: his wife

Leftis: Daborno’s younger brother; son of Galno and Pola

Nimiria: his wife

Raco: 2-year-old son of Leftis

Tandiria: Daborno’s deceased sister

Rashemia: High Priestess (Codian) and Seeress of the Clan of the Axe and Owl; Daborno’s cousin (daughter of his deceased brother)

Nardia: a lesser Codian

Findisa: a lesser Codian

Other Epanishai Characters

(Real and Legendary)

Frisamur: Daborno’s wagoner

Moraibo: a servant of Daborno

Carilo: Chieftain of the Black Horse Clan

Aramo: the warrior who swings the axe at Himrith

Maldro: the warrior who lights the torch

Varmo: the warrior who seizes hold of the trumpet

Anonia: High Priestess in Galno’s time

Gauramur: a legendary Epanishai ruler

Basharo of the Golden Eyes: a harpist in the court of Gauramur the Mighty, reputed to be Siritoch

Toramnia the Prophetess: A legendary figure who was said to have received the gift of writing from the god

Brindur: a legendary hero

Chapter 1

The Spring among the Stones

A child sat cross-legged, playing the flute – a girl-child of five, in a gray woolen smock, with bare, sun-browned arms and legs and tawny hair waving loose over her shoulders. Beside her a boy scarcely older than she sang a chant of ancient Siritoch words in a small, clear voice that ran beneath the piping like the sympathetic string of a lute. Between them a third child danced, weaving mysteries of arms and feet and swaying torso that needed for teacher only the dreams of the tribe.

And with the sighing of the wind and the beaming of the ancient summer sun the music intertwined itself – the ancient Music of the changeless pattern that the children of the Land between the Mountains and the Sea suckled with their mothers’ milk.

Thanol appeared in the doorway of her lodge, vigorously sweeping out the spilled grain and potato parings with a cedar broom. Her lips were pursed and her green eyes gloomed under a scowl, intended to be fierce. Himrith the Headman’s wife was coming across the compound from the milking house, bent under a yoke bearing two full buckets. Thanol saw her and swept with heightened agitation, making a flurry of barley chaff in the morning sun.

Himrith! Himrith! Is that naughty Nebet in your house?

The older woman stopped and regarded her neighbor with slight amusement. What? Have you misplaced that grandson of mine again?

It’s Nebet that misplaces himself! I sent him out to the goats and here is Anthin come just now to say he never arrived! Seven years old – and can he do anything to help anyone? I tell you, he’ll be the death of his poor aunt Thanol!

Himrith’s amusement was growing. Balancing the yoke, she pushed her gray hair back from her face, her gold-flecked eyes shining in the sun like the glittering barley chaff. But you know where he is, Thanol. He’s wherever my father is.

Oh, of course! And where would Leys be, I would ask? Nebet is seven and Leys is seventy-five and they’re two of a kind. Thanol stamped a foot, her doeskin boot failing to make any noise on the packed earth.

Don’t be so upset, Thanol. The boy has no parents and my father is old. Let them have their peace for a while. Lonith and Corith and Harmandrol are over there playing at music. Send one of them to the goats.

But with some muttering about the trouble her naughty nephew caused the family of Chro, Thanol turned her back on Himrith and disappeared into her lodge, still sweeping.

For a moment Himrith looked after her, her warm eyes darkening a little as the image of Nebet’s mother – her dead daughter Leyith – flicked across her mind. Then her eyes cleared again and she hoisted the yoke, smiling at Thanol’s lack of tranquility, a fault so alien to the Siritoch temperament.

The village of Thran was an aggregation of thatched log lodges, workshops, and storehouses within a compound fenced by a palisade too low to do more than keep goats, ponies, and small children from wandering. It stood in a shallow, comfortable hollow, separated by a stream from the round, grassy, nearly treeless knob of land which gave the village its name. [Thran: Bald] It was in the spacious oak and birch parkland stretching away to the north that the Siritoch of Thran pastured their sheep, driving them out in the spring from their winter folds around the village to riot in the knee-deep grass all the summer long. Most of the men, half the women, and many children summered with the sheep. The rest of the villagers stayed in Thran, tending the goats and the barley, potatoes, pulses, and hay – spinning and weaving, making pots and willow baskets, mending the thatches, gathering the wild plums, cherries, and grapes which they dried or made into wine.

News traveled slowly in the Land between the Mountains and the Sea. Instinctively averse to crowding, the Siritoch built their villages far apart, their only contact coming from the summer shepherds whose wanderings brought them into the path of herders from other settlements. Yet when inhabitants of two villages met, there was no strangeness. Whether they were friends or had met once years before or had never met at all, they were Siritoch and moved in the same pattern that had held the Ser-irith-elac in the ancient days before the Clouded Time, across which there was no memory.

Nebet skipped along the stream bank, whistling to the birds, hopping over the patches of sunlight that penetrated the willows. His knee-length tunic of undyed wool was soaking wet; it was much more amusing to flounder through the water to reach the south side of the stream than to use the bridge. His gray-gold eyes shone with mischievous good temper, his nut-colored hair rollicked in shaggy curls, and his legs were streaked and his nose was daubed with drying mud.

Soon he left the stream, which angled northward, and pressed along an indistinct trail through a tangle of birch saplings and young cedars. He was on his way to the Stone Circle and after a while the first menhir came into view, rising above the undergrowth to twice the height of one of the slightly built Siritoch, tilted to the left with its capstone lying on the ground between it and its fellow to the south.

Nebet climbed over the capstone and entered the ring, which was in fact a horseshoe curve of paired black stones, most with the lintels intact. The ends of the curve were pressed against a white bluff to the west, which was part of the line of broken hills marking the boundary of the upland country.

Nebet took a few steps into the circle, peering around. Wal! Walanath! [Grandfather! Grandpapa!] Where are you?

Tall cedars and some bushy plum trees hindered the vision, while birches thrust leafy white fingers between the menhirs. The stones themselves were draped with grape vines, which cascaded in particular luxury over a lofty dolmen in the center of the ring.

Nebet advanced until he was close to the dolmen. It towered above his tiny body, four times his height. Where can he be? I just know he’s here! Walanath! Don’t fool me! Where are you?

A tiny, high-pitched laugh – a tiny, stifled titter of delight – belled somewhere high in the air. Nebet looked up, planting his hands on his hips. Walanath! Whatever are you doing up there?

On the capstone of the dolmen sat a little, wrinkled old man, swinging his legs like a child and chortling into his fist. Come up, Nebetanatha! His high voice was a bird’s trill.

The boy scampered squirrel-like up jagged stone steps on the dolmen’s west side, which led to a narrow ledge below the capstone itself. From the ledge Nebet hoisted himself to the top and plumped down beside his great-grandfather, commencing to swing his legs in unison. It was not the first time that Leys had hidden on the dolmen, but Nebet always pretended to be surprised.

The old man’s frame was as lean and gnarled and tenacious as the ancient grape stems that surrounded him. He wore trousers and baggy tunic, with a goatskin pouch affixed to a rope girdle and a wooden vertical flute on a length of wool around his neck. His face was dried apple beneath a cranium as smooth as a plum and fringed from ear level downwards with soft, white curls. Like every Siritoch, he was beardless. His lips, parted in a gleeful grin, showed five broken teeth while the Siritoch gold of his eyes had faded to a lambent amber green. His was a child’s face grown old – the ancient face of one who had found it needless to acknowledge the corruption of time.

I’m supposed to be with the goats, said Nebet, looking up at Leys with a grin filled with sprouting incisors.

Tsk. Why don’t you mind your poor Aunt Thanol?

Because I knew you’d be here.

Tsk. You’re a naughty boy.

I know. Nebet giggled and twisted about ecstatically.

But I’ll tell you what we’ll do. After a while we’ll both go up to the hill and chase the goats. If the two of us stay half as long, it’s the same as if you had stayed the whole day by yourself.

Nebet looked away, glanced back, scowled, took breath to speak and thought better of it, and concluded with a silent consideration of Leys’s elusive logic.

The old man poked him. I’ve got some cheese. And plums. The birds left us a few. Want some?

Of course.

Leys rummaged in his pouch for the edibles and filled Nebet’s hands with thumb-sized sloes. They sat eating, dribbling juice onto tunics that were well-stained from many such feasts and worn from much scrubbing.

Nebet’s eyes wandered dreamily along the prospect in front of him – the tall, white cliff, the two enormous black menhirs that stood against it, the low stone hut between them. Before the hut was a pool with bare banks and white-crusted sides that descended cone-shaped to an uncertain depth. The pool shivered constantly under the silent influx of its parent spring, which emerged from the cliff inside the hut and flowed out through a conduit beneath the threshold. The basin never overflowed nor did its water diminish, maintained in perfect equilibrium by an underground outlet.

Walanath, tell me again about how the stones came to be here.

The old man peered sideways at the menhirs. They’re black, you notice. There is no black rock like this for ten-days’ grazing from here.

Nebet nodded.

But I’ve seen where there are boulders like these – in the uplands, along the crest before the meadows begin. They lie all in humps and slabs – stuck in the ground – big as treetops.

But how did they get here?

The Lords of Music did it – the Great Ones with their horns and cymbals. When they beat the gong, stones rise and trees walk. When they blow their horns, all the creatures of the world dance and sing. They called the stones here, just as they call out the shoots and the young birds in the spring.

Where are they, Wal? asked Nebet wistfully.

Now? In the Caves.

What does that mean?

For the first time Leys looked a trifle perplexed. The Great Ones are in the Caves. We don’t see them any longer.

Why?

Leys stared down at the boy’s upturned face. Then he took up the flute that hung from his neck and began to blow it.

The answer seemed to satisfy Nebet. He sat gazing straight ahead abstractedly, listening to the familiar rise and fall of the piping.

At length Leys stopped, puffing a little. My old breath is getting short. Here, you play.

Nebet accepted the flute eagerly, bending his small body to the welcome task. The notes skipped lovely and light and joyous around the circle, filtering through the birch leaves, catching themselves in the vines, sliding down the surfaces of the ancient stones, skimming the pool until they probed the very spring itself.

When Nebet stopped, Leys took back the flute and held it in his gnarled fingers, caressing the worn wood that once had been decorated with the spirals of ram’s horns.

It’s the best flute in the village, Walanath. Maybe in the whole world.

Leys nodded solemnly. I’m going to give it to you, Nebet. After I die, I’ll give it to you.

I’m glad, Walanatha. I like it. I like it better than any other flute I’ll ever have.

Leys hung the instrument’s cord around his neck again. Neither was disturbed by their last exchange – it was natural to play music and to pass it on to the young. It was natural to live, and to die.

The goats are waiting, naughty Nebet. Then, unsequentially, Are you thirsty?

Very.

Let’s have a drink and then go find the goats.

Nebet hopped down the steps and reached up to assist the old man’s more cautious descent. Hand in hand they rounded the still, shivering pool, moving toward the stone hut on its far side.

Grapevines mantled the hut, the huge, dark leaves sheltering many birds’ nests and a riot of green fruit. On the south side a darkness loomed among the vines and Leys stooped to part their tangle over a narrow opening, so low that even the slightly built old man had to bend to pass through it. With a slight pressure of the hand he urged his great-grandson ahead of him.

The hut, some four cubits square, was floored with stone in which was cut a channel for the spring water that gushed from the cliff. A narrow slab of stone, something like a bed, flanked the south wall; otherwise the cubicle was distinguished only by the contrast between the white cliff and the black rock of the structure itself. Without being loud, the sound of the rushing water beat upon the temples. There was the fusty smell of eternal dampness but no sign of moss or plant of any kind. Strangest of all was the faint aura of unfathomable light that continued even after Leys and Nebet had let the vines fall together behind them.

They sat on the slab, plunging their hands into the spring and cupping the icy water to their lips. Its taste was bitter, stimulating, uncompromisingly pure as it poured from the earth’s breast.

Leys’s head came up, his eyes rounding as the tingling drink made him gasp. Nebet wrinkled his nose and rubbed it with the back of his hand. Leys touched his fingers lightly, reverently, to the cavity from which the water flowed, then touched his flute and his forehead, nodding his head. It’s good to be here, holy one.

It’s good, repeated Nebet, bobbing his head in imitation of the old man.

All right, let’s go, Nebetanatha. The goats will have strayed away by now.

To the west were mountains – to the east, the sea.

They were far apart, many days pasturing, with uplands and midlands and lowlands, hills and broad rivers between. On the sea and the rivers the Siritoch fished in small boats with flaxen sails and nets of cord; in the meadows and woodlands they ran their sheep. But at the mountains’ tremendous and unscalable wall, all things stopped. The Eight Passes spoke no welcome and no one entered there. If a child asked Why? the Siritoch had no answer. It was not that the snow-crowned stone held any embedded evil – it was merely that entering there was outside the turning of their lives.

So the mountains breathed their cold silence and kept their secrets while the centuries slipped across them as unheeded as the ebb and flow of snow.

The goats were pasturing on the grassy knob south of the village. As Leys and Nebet neared the top, Thanol’s ten-year-old daughter Anthin spied them and leaped to battle.

Where have you been, you bad boy? Mother sent you up right after breakfast and here you are, come almost at noon! Hilathol and I have worn our legs short chasing the kids! She’s off right now searching the hazel thicket for the two little ones! You ought to be ashamed!

But Nebet wriggled out of his cousin’s indignant clutch and sprinted to meet the dogs – three rangy, close-coated, brownish-yellow shepherds, of a breed as old as time. Two were old, with gray muzzles and stiff haunches, while the third was a female with four whelps; none was up to the long summer wandering of the villagers and their thirty-score sheep. They leaped riotously on Nebet, rolling him on the ground in a flurry of ecstatic squeals. Anthin found herself with no one to scold but Leys.

He patted the scowling child on the head. Don’t fuss so much. It will untune your lute strings.

Oh, Wal! Anthin stamped her foot, her face melting into a grin in spite of her effort to preserve a cross expression. Then she took the old man’s arm and officiously propelled him toward a thicket of stunted cedars at the top of the hill.

This was base camp, from which the children took turns running after the goats and the lolloping pups. Midday being nigh, a basket containing barley bread, cheese, and a honeycomb appeared, and Leys crooned to the frisky nannies while the children milked them directly into their mouths.

Afterward, activity abated. The strong warmth of the sun encouraged somnolence and goats and dogs alike sought patches of shade under bushes and beside rocks. The children amused themselves by brushing the sleek hides of the goats and adorning their horns with ribbons plaited from colorful rags.

But soon even this occupation was abandoned and the making of music became sufficient for joy. Anthin had a half-sized, four-stringed lute on which she plucked while the younger Hilathol kept time with wooden finger rattles. Then Leys played his flute while Nebet clapped the rattles and the girls sprawled in the grass and petted the youngest kid.

At intervals, when the sweet sounds stilled, the deep tones of a bronze trumpet – an ancient instrument preserved from some forgotten Time of Clouds when the Siritoch dwelled in other lands – coiled upward from the village of Thran.

The knob was not as high as the bluff that backed the stones, but it was a little to its south and so looked west through a break in the uplands’ outworks. Nebet’s attention lingered dreamily there, where the mountains’ fingered peaks showed gloved in translucent gold and shadowed blue. The vision, hidden from the lower valleys, stirred and enraptured him; he gazed slack-jawed, his arms wrapping his raised knees while the trumpet notes entwined the hill. He felt his throat grow dry, and when he swallowed, it seemed the taste of the bitter water of the spring persisted there.

Suddenly, without will, he turned his head and stared east, where the sea lay invisible, three times as far away as the mountains. The sky whitened a little as it bent to the horizon and against the paleness was a vertical line of gray, wisped at the upper end, indistinctly severing the sky into two halves.

Walanath, what’s that dark place?

Leys looked at the boy and then peered in several directions. What dark place?

That up-and-down place in the sky.

Leys squinted, shading his age-dimmed eyes, but succeeded only in making them water, whereupon he rubbed them vigorously with the heels of his hands.

Why, that’s smoke, said Anthin, rising up on her elbows to look.

Smoke?

Yes, smoke, silly, that comes from a fire. She plumped back down into the grass, yawning.

Smoke, repeated Leys. It may be some house or woodland is ablaze.

He had finished rubbing his eyes and he looked at Nebet, still blinking. The boy was clutching his knees, his face hidden against them, and when Leys laid a hand on his shoulder, he found the sinews as tense as birch rods.

Nebet. Little one?

The boy raised his head. His face was pale, so that the freckles on his cheeks showed vividly. I feel funny. I feel ... He moved his hand vaguely over his face and body. I have a sort of pain here.

There was a moment of silence. Then Nebet whispered with a little jerk of the arms, Play, Walanatha.

Leys nodded. The long, slow, sunlit, dew-bathed notes merged with the trumpet tones to lie in lucent pools across the land.

At length Leys stopped, his breath spent, and looked down at his great-grandson. Nebet was smiling up at him, easy again, his color freshened. Leys grinned back. Neither spoke, sensing the needlessness of words.

In the valley the trumpet was silent; on the hill girls, goats, and dogs were asleep.

In the sky the line of smoke had dissipated, blown away by the winds of air as the winds of Music had blown its image from the minds of the Siritoch.

Chapter 2

The First Wanderers

When a child was born, there was music; when a man died, there was dancing. There was no more doubt that there would be births than that death would come – no more struggle against death than against the welcoming of new life. The joy of birth was solemn and there was grief at death because the Siritoch loved deeply and understood loss, but there was no rebellion. Death was accepted; it accompanied life, and there could be no crying out against the Music.

The Siritoch cherished their sheep; what they needed for food, they slaughtered soberly and without joy. They lived peaceably with the wild things of their land, hunting the deer and rabbit and woodcock only when a bad crop or sheep plague threatened them with a lean season. The killing of humans was unknown among the Siritoch. It was not that there was some self-conscious prohibition against murder, enforced by regulation and violent penalty on violent men. It was merely that the killing of one human creature by another out of rage or lust or covetousness was as alien to the Siritoch as the power of flight or of breathing underwater like a fish – as much a contradiction of the Music as if every pipe and lute in the Land between the Mountains and the Sea were to be broken, jumbled in a heap, and burned.

In the evening the goats were driven in to the village, crossing the stream on a split-log bridge. They were counted, milked, and penned in the south end of the compound, where they were safe without the watching that the outlying sheepfolds required. A pottage of pease, fresh herbs, and salt mutton had been prepared over the big communal hearth in the center of the compound, and the twenty-eight villagers who remained in Thran out of a winter population of sixty-five gathered to partake of it in the sunset. By an informal rotation among families, a few Siritoch each evening played harps, pipes, and tabors while others entertained their friends with dancing.

The Siritoch women wore loosely sashed tunics and ankle-length divided skirts and when they danced, they donned whirling cloaks of blue and yellow and dusky crimson. Around the hearth and in and out among the scattered birches and oaks they danced – sometimes alone, sometimes touching hands with their male partners or leaping into their arms like deer or like birds gliding on glowing wings. The dance was both pleasure and ritual – a satisfaction for the eye and spirit, a thanksgiving for the serene rhythm of another day.

On this night the dance was cut short when a thunderstorm shriveled the bloom of sunset, doused the last embers of the fire, and scattered the villagers to their lodges.

Leys and Nebet ended the evening at Himrith’s. It was difficult to enjoy oneself in Nebet’s dwelling, for Thanol scolded everyone and put both old and young to work cleaning the hearth, cracking barley groats, or running herd on her three-year-old twins. Leys was nominally head of his own household, but in fact before Nebet was born he had relinquished both power and duty to his nephew Orlin, son of Leys’s late brother. Orlin and two of his sons and his sons’ families were gone with the sheep, but another son, together with his pregnant wife of seven months, was keeping Orlin’s lodge. Frin and Meridach did not much relish the continual presence of an old man and an inquisitive little boy, so Leys and Nebet spent many an evening in the Headman’s house. Himrith would cuff Nebet good-naturedly, kiss her father and do him reverence, and then let the two of them whittle the floor white with wood shavings, dabble in potter’s clay, tell each other tales, and generally do as they liked without hindrance.

Himrith was, by the loose governing tradition of the village, surrogate head of Thran while her husband Narlach was gone with the sheep. Their widowed elder son Parnom and his three boys were also away, leaving his 14-year-old daughter Veyaharn to stay with Himrith. Their younger son – Ristros of the lame foot – also lived at home, together with his wife and their two little sons, aged five and three. It was a comfortable and harmonious household, occupying two big rooms – one for sleeping, with a loft for the children and three beds muffled by woolen curtains – and one for waking and working, containing a large wall hearth, table and stools and cupboards, quern and mortar and cooking pots, wool bins and the big loom on which Himrith so deftly wove the lengths of natural wool for common use and the pieces of colored tapestry for dancing cloaks, sashes, scarves, and bed hangings.

On this night Himrith was spinning, the long distaff tucked comfortably under her arm, while Veyaharn and daughter-in-law Batharamol carded wool. Ristros was cutting and tooling a goatskin girdle at the same table, taking advantage of the lamps that burned there. The little ones were asleep in the other room. In the south wall the hearth flickered low and Leys and Nebet sat curled up in a corner beside it. Leys, his arm slack across the boy’s shoulders, was humming to himself in a contented and monotonous drone while Nebet pillowed his head on the bony old chest, his eyes fixed drowsily upon his great-grandfather’s flute, which his forefinger lightly caressed. There was no other sound except the dripping of the last rain from the thatch, the pop of blazing cedar wood, the click of Himrith’s spindle.

Ristros raised his head. I hear the dogs.

Startled, Himrith ceased to spin, listening.

Perhaps wolves ... began Batharamol nervously.

I doubt it, in fat summer. Himrith rose, laying aside her distaff. Besides, they’re running for the gate. I’ll go and see. She fetched a cloak and flung it around her, pulling up the hood.

I’ll come with you. Ristros hastened after his mother, limping on his twisted foot. After some protests, Batharamol was persuaded to remain behind and she resumed her place at the table, taking up the carding teasels again. In the compound several other people had put their heads out of doors. Thanol stood silhouetted in her doorway, unwilling to venture into the dwindling rain, but old Trachin had sallied forth with a sputtering torch and he lighted Himrith’s way to the compound gate where the dogs were barking persistently and trotting up and down.

Outside the gate a large, shadowy form loomed and a pony neighed. Then a voice spoke plaintively. Please, might we have shelter? We’ve come so far and are tired.

Himrith stood a moment astonished, then gestured to the men. Lay back the gate.

This was done and a small wagon entered the compound, pulled by one of the shaggy draft ponies of which every village possessed a dozen or more according to its wealth. The wagon, ill-covered by torn sailcloth, had a loose wheel that threatened to separate from its hub at any moment, and the pony was limping, its head drooping forlornly. Two figures occupied the wagon seat – a man and a woman – drenched to the skin, their hair draggling over their eyes, as woebegone and miserable-seeming as any creatures that Himrith had seen for many a day.

What is this place? asked the man in a trembling voice.

The village of Thran. But you must have come far not to know that. Where are your sheep?

We have none. We are fisherfolk, from the River Chernin.

Himrith frowned and caught Trachin’s arm to raise the torch higher. She saw the man push back his hair from a gaunt and somber face. Like the pony, the woman seemed too tired to care whether she ever raised her head again.

Come down from the wagon, said Himrith. I am the Headman’s wife and my house is for your care. Ristros, see to the pony. Get the wagon under a shed. Here, give yourself to me, young one ...

Himrith helped the woman down and stood steadying her, stroking back her hair. How cold you are, and wet! Come to my house – let me dry and comfort you. My name is Himrith and once I had a daughter your age ...

At the lodge Batharamol leaped to her feet in astonishment as her mother-in-law brought in the sodden and shivering couple. In the corner Leys raised his drooping eyelids a fraction and Nebet sat up and stared.

With quiet persuasiveness, Himrith and Batharamol stripped and dried their guests, wrapped them in blankets, and settled them at the table with hot soup and elderberry wine and sops of barley bread. Don’t be afraid – the pony will be all right. Here is Ristros come back, to tell you so himself. Trachin will rub his leg with liniment and give him a good feed. Sit quiet now and let me braid your hair ... ’Ramolanatha, bring more soup. Have a care – the kettle is hot ...

The man and woman were younger than Ristros and Batharamol and their names were Pranet and Crismath. Their bewilderment seemed so acute that Himrith, curious as she was about their unexpected arrival, refrained from questioning them and firmly cut off her children’s probing. At length, however, food and wine and warmth began to revive the couple and they responded with shy thanks for the kindnesses shown to them. Although they smiled, their bronze-gold eyes remained somber.

You are from the Chernin? said Batharamol incredulously. I’ve never met anyone from there. It’s far to wander.

And these meadows make for poor fishing, interpolated Ristros wryly.

We’ve not come here to fish, said Pranet, his eyes on his cup. We have fled. We have come – to live elsewhere ... He rubbed his temple, seeming puzzled or even dazed at the sound of his own words.

You have fled? Himrith’s eyes passed levelly between the pair.

It’s not good below, said Crismath as her glance met Himrith’s. Things are changed. There is an evil; there are tales told of a change and an evil.

Himrith’s soft brow wrinkled a little. We have heard tales, too. Last autumn, when the shepherds came home, they told of meeting other shepherds who had met still others who told tales. They spoke of newcomers in the lowlands – strange people who are not Siritoch.

It’s true, said Pranet. We met some who had seen them – fierce, tall men – giants – with monstrous horses ...

Strain was drawing Crismath’s face. They have terrible black hair growing on their faces and they speak with unnatural tongues, like the men of the legends, of the Clouded Times. And they ride over the land – with torches – and they ... Oh, Himrith, Himrith ... She let her head sink down, covering her face.

Himrith caressed her hair, looking at Pranet, while Ristros and Batharamol stared at them in nascent fear. Then Pranet answered the unspoken question. They kill. They kill people. They cast the Siritoch from their villages and strike them with the long knives that hang at their sides. They burn the villages with torches. They kill humans, Himrith. They kill.

In the silence that followed came the soft sound of Leys’s snoring, but no one looked at him. Within the limp curve of the old man’s arm Nebet sat stiffly, his wide eyes shimmering gold in the firelight as he moved them unceasingly across the frightened grown-up faces at the table.

Do you know for sure that this is so? Himrith’s question was sudden, a little sharp.

Siritoch came to our village whose homes had been burned, said Pranet. "No one had been killed, but the strangers drove them away. Then again there was a woman who saw