The Healer's Covenant: The Tale of Lost Covenants, #1

By Joshua Wheeler

Born into a world where magic covenants enact enormous tolls on those who use them, the young Dunerunner Elara Linn has no understanding of the circumstances of her own birth.  She does not know the role her life has played in driving the nations of Viuva and Hass to war. As she grows in comprehension of her own destiny, she will be drawn into an ancient struggle, with forces beyond her comprehension. Join Elara on her journey to discover the truth behind The Healer's Covenant. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Wheeler
• Release date: Sep 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201395827

Joshua Wheeler

Josh Wheeler is a long-time fan of speculative fiction. He still recites the Litany Against Fear on a regular basis. A full time father of 6 wonderful children, he and his wife reside under crystal blue skies deep in the Rocky Mountains.  When not reading novels, Josh can usually be found reading rulebooks to boardgames, or trying to wrangle at least some of his children into a game. 

Book preview

Prologue

The pain was out of place.

The cramps were not unexpected.

The throbbing had been anticipated. The discomfort and sense of displacement would pass. These things always did. The discordant note in the symphony was less melodious only because it was too soon.

"This is too early!" Rainne’s mind announced forcibly to her body. There was no response from her body other than another wracking pain. All of her mind’s logic-riddled arguments availed her nothing.

Rainne’s child was coming.

Her body had become nothing more than a vehicle for the premature birth of a legend.

Rainne sagged helplessly against the sandstone wall to her right and slid moaning to a seat on the rocky stairway leading from the lower level of the village of Dahho to the upper level. She groaned softly as the impatient unborn child moved closer to the world.

The sounds of one of the village children skipping aimlessly down the steps towards her filtered through the pounding in her head.

Fluid leaked liberally down the steps. Rainne felt the warmth of it soak her dress and lower body.

The skipping girl moved abreast of Rainne. Rainne’s left hand shot out mindlessly and caught the girl’s trailing arm. Incredibly, the child stopped wordlessly and turned to gaze with sunshine-filled wide brown eyes at Rainne’s rounded, crumpled form.

Please, sweetie, Rainne gasped, do you know where the Crenchee lives? The child shook her head in obvious confusion. Rainne berated herself soundlessly as she remembered the children’s nickname for the village healer and religious guide.

I mean, do you know where the Believer lives? With the corrected question a smile sprang to the girl’s cherubic face and she nodded vigorously in the affirmative. Rainne managed the pain-filled start of a smile at the child’s enthusiasm.

Then go as fast as you can— Rainne stopped as she gritted her teeth against another wrenching contraction. ...and tell him that Rainne Linn’s newest child is going to be— another pause. Tears came unbidden to Rainne’s eyes. ...born somewhere between the Earth and Skye. Go! This last command was delivered with desperate urgency as Rainne’s expected child again exerted its own enthusiasm.

Rainne’s young hope darted back up the stairs towards the center of Dahho’s Skye level. Rainne felt her clothing further saturate with birthing fluids.

She looked skyward and saw a distant bank of clouds rise voraciously and devour all but a single ray of the life-giving midmorning sun.

Rainne’s body demanded that the child within be given life.

She began to push.

MERIDITH PUSHED OPEN the door to the Crenchee’s hut. She was as breathless as a five-year-old can be. A wizened face looked up from a collection of charts at the intrusion. Dust swirled merrily about young Meridith. Her face did not mirror the dust. She was as worried as any young child with a mission has a right to be, and her turned-down lips and watering eyes shouted her concern.

What is wrong, little mother? queried the man in the endearing tone of a concerned elder.

Meridith’s tears spilled out of her deep brown eyes and she replied with the tears in her throat, Believer! Mother Rainne is having a baby on the road to the Skye! Please come fast, as fast as you can!

Yes, of course child, he replied in a distracted tone. Crenchee Ombert had already snatched a small satchel of pain-numbing herbs and was moving in the direction of the door.

His iron Drop of Hope bounced soundlessly against his dune-colored, loose-fitting top. Ombert was running before he passed the doorframe of his single-story, single-room shop and home. Dahho’s small Citadel of Life flashed by him to the left as his feet carried him towards the village’s stone staircase.

Ombert nearly wept with relief to see that Rainne had collapsed only a dozen steps away from the upper level of the village. He could see as he drew near her that she was nearly unconscious from exhaustion and the pain associated with birth. Another corner of Ombert’s mind recorded the frightening quantity of sweat, blood, and fluid framing Rainne’s short frame. He knelt beside Rainne and placed his bony, sand-scraped right hand on her main artery.

Rainne’s pulse was strong.

"Thank the Giver for small gifts," Ombert thought to himself. As her bulging stomach contracted slightly, he realized that the woman’s body continued to do its work of giving life.

The unborn child was emerging.

Can I help, Believer? came the question framed in purest innocence from the little girl who had followed Ombert to the best of her ability. Meridith had just arrived at his side.

Thank the Giver for his children, Ombert whispered out loud and then more audibly, Yes, little one. Can you be brave? As he posed the question, he lifted the prone woman’s dress and saw that the baby’s head and body would emerge in no more than two or three heaves.

Another push came from Rainne’s body.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the girl nodding vigorously.

Splendid! he commended her, Now hold out your arms. Ombert moved two steps below Rainne’s inert form and readied himself to receive the child.

Rainne’s body seemed to sigh as it performed a final birthing push, and the unborn child became the newly born child. He turned the baby face down and placed the fragile new life in the hands of his five-year-old companion.

Knowing full well that his aging frame could not carry Rainne’s full weight to the citadel, Ombert grasped the holy symbol at his chest and placed it before his left eye.

Through the iron-wrought raindrop hanging from his circle Ombert saw a wisp of white cloud flit aimlessly by. The cloud was replaced by blue sky. The sky was replaced by a maelstrom of possibilities.

Ombert nodded gravely in response to an unspoken question.

He Believed.

A slight tremor rocked the staircase. A crack appeared in the sandstone wall to Ombert’s right. A slide of rock no bigger than his hand was born and cascaded quietly over the stairway and was gone. Ombert felt the strength of rock enter his muscles. He lifted Rainne effortlessly.

Ombert began to ascend.

Follow me to the citadel, little Meridith. She climbed faithfully beside him, her sunshine-brown eyes filled with worried wonder at the unmoving, unbreathing form in her arms.

Meridith had one little brother. She remembered as much about his birth as could be expected of a child. As she climbed beside her village’s spiritual leader, she remembered that her baby brother had moved when he was born. He had squirmed a whole bunch of squirms. The baby in her arms did not even wiggle one wiggle. As she trotted along next to Ombert, she came to the well thought-out conclusion that something was wrong with the new baby. Meridith knew that Ombert could make it right. As though sensing her confidence, Ombert walked with still stronger strides across Dahho’s Skye plateau towards the simple oaken door of Dahho’s Citadel of Life.

The door would only be considered simple in a country outside of Viuva. Oak was so unknown on the desert plateau as to approach legendary status. After being allowed to acclimatize, oak was prized for its durability in Viuva. In Dahho, it was a sight rarer than rain. Dahho’s oldest family, the Auwsteens, had paid and arranged for the shipment of the Citadel’s oaken door from Viuva’s neighbor. The door had been slated for an ignominious retirement in the refuse pile before being acquired by the Auwsteen patriarch and carried across the river Volder and overland in time for the dedicatory ceremonies of Dahho’s Citadel of Life. The Citadel seemed ready-built for the door.

Simple carvings of fowl, fish, and forest decorated the door from threshold to header. The out-of-place scenery of the door filled visitors to the Citadel with the proper perspective for the diversity of life.

With a whispered word from Ombert, a burst of wind-driven sand whirled harshly into the eastern windows of the Citadel and pushed the door wide. The inside of the oaken door was decorated with scenes of flood, fire, and famine.

Ombert taught his people to remember that Life is defined by a man’s perspective.

Ombert moved into an anteroom located off the west side of the citadel’s main hall. He settled Rainne’s body gently upon an empty cot.

Those who deal in life and healing barter equally in death and suffering. The minister who turns to bind a broken body turns away from another perishing patient. One patient is always sacrificed so that another may be saved. A failed healer cannot come to terms with this truth.

A failing healer will never recognize that fact.

Ombert was one of the finest Crenchee of the region. He acknowledged and accepted the price of his art.

Tears gathered gently in the tired folds of Ombert’s eyelids as he took the unmoving infant from Meridith’s trembling arms. The priest rolled the baby off of his left hand so that the motionless infant’s sternum rested just above his wrist.

Ombert struck the baby smartly below the small of her back.

Meridith gasped in shock. Ombert smiled reassuringly as a lonely tear left its fellows and ran haphazardly through the creases of his age-worn face.

We must oust the old water, he said as he rapped the baby’s back again, and convince the little one to welcome the new air. A third time Ombert slapped the small back seeking to expel the fluids of birth.

Ombert smelled time prowling behind him like a swarm of vultures circling ever lower, dusty and rotten.

The infant had already begun to discolor.

Rainne moved tiredly and at the edge of his vision, Ombert saw her eyelashes flash darkly. She moved to sit up. Meredith skittered to her side. The girl locked her small hands around Rainne’s left index and middle finders and lent her five years of strength to the woman.

Ombert finished his mental journey and found a decision at the destination.

Rainne sat up sharply. She clutched desperately at the fleshy cord connecting her to her newest child. The umbilical cord pulsed randomly, weakly, and more slowly with each second.

Rainne looked up.

Ombert stared across the space between them.

Don’t let her fall. She begged quietly.

Then Ombert saw her eyes. Upon the rusty brown face of her iris, Ombert saw a figure falling.

A man was falling in her mind.

A husband was forever hurtling through her memories.

And soon a child might join him.

Beyond the cliffs of memory, Ombert saw the sands of the universe shift in question.

Ombert understanding whispered, The price will be so high.

The Giver never specified exactly what he had to take. Ombert knew that he could negotiate no terms with the powers. He could only believe. He could merely accept or decline the covenant.

Ombert’s tears tumbled freely down his cheeks.

He accepted the price on behalf of the newborn.

Rainne gasped in astonishment as her afterbirth contractions began and a powerful surge of life flooded through the umbilical cord.

Cut Rainne. Cut now! he urged the woman.

She wrapped her right hand around the handle of the marriage blade woven into her hair. Drawing it forth quickly, she drew the obsidian blade perpendicular to the cord.

It parted swiftly.

Slowly, as if wakening from pleasantly green summer dreams of the life before, the newborn babe began to move. Her right arm stretched desperately forward and retracted. The babe’s left arm followed in a mirroring motion. Then her two legs kicked backwards, filled with fresh new strength. As the child completed the motions again in reverse, she became a swimmer plunging into and clawing her way against the current of life’s river away from the falls of death.

Ombert rolled the child gently onto her back and cupped her tiny form in his two rough-hewn hands.

Thank you, sobbed Rainne semiconsciously.

Suddenly the babe’s eyes burst open, and her mouth gaped wide and empty. In the next moment the baby’s mouth was filled. Her infant cries rolled and gathered like a bank of storm clouds until they filled the vault of the citadel and reverberated back.

She was a choir of one.

Automatically Ombert offered the babe to her mother. Instinctively Rainne reached out and drew the infant softly to her bosom. Turning Rainne began to hum a pianissimo countermelody to her girl’s forte notes of birth.

Don’t cry little girl

It’s just a welcome

From a loving world

Don’t cry on and on

Smile and say

Hello to the dawn

Don’t cry once again

Just hear the song

Of Mother Rainne

Turning from the duet, Ombert offered his empty right hand to his five-year-old midwife and nodded wordlessly to the door. As his nod reached its peak Ombert saw that it was raining determinedly.

The windows of the citadel echoed the themes of its thick wooden doors. Four major windows framed in three-foot by six-foot openings showed scenes of life, death, creation, and destruction. The tales were pieced together in a bright montage of autumn tinted shards of glass. Preeminent in each puzzle was a leaden-formed Raindrop or Tear.

The steadily cascading rain ran in sheets down the stained-glass windows. Droplets collected in the wide leaden base of the Tears. The beads met, conceived, reproduced and rapidly sealed the symbol in a wet window.

A sky-born ray of light dashed itself to pieces on the clear membrane and scattered bits of color throughout the citadel.

Behind them, the babe continued her soprano aria. In that moment of scattered light her cries were laced with joy.

The priest led his five-year-old companion into the rain.

Chapter 1 First Chords

P ower has been taken from the tribe this day, the leanly muscled, sun broiled Soulkeeper whispered.

And there is no mother for my son, Therass replied in a low feral purr.

The Soulkeeper’s eyes widened questioningly. Therass nodded curtly. He turned and set his squalling, wriggling burden on the cot to the left of his home’s entrance. Soulkeeper Thrangass’s presence galled him. So did the truths that had just been spoken.

Therass’s son had no mother.

Therass had gone to the tribe’s Dens of the Lonely. He had found no one there but the wizened caretaker. There were no women without mates. There were no children without guardians. There was only the caretaker, cleaning and keeping the four lonely huts for the time when they would fill again with the unwed and the orphaned.

There is no mother to feed my son, caretaker? Therass had asked with concern.

There is none, chief judge Therass, the caretaker had replied and added, The tribe is nearly in balance.

Not nearly enough. And Therass had turned towards home with his newborn charge.

Now Thrangass sat here in Therass’s sanctuary smug in the knowledge granted him by the spirits. He brought Therass news that was not new. He recounted to Therass tales already told. Therass despised him for his constant maneuvering toward power. Therass knew that the only stirrings in the ash-coated, burnt-out black coal of Thrangass’s heart came from the potential for increased fame and greater fortune.

Therass vowed to remember Thrangass so that his spirit would never return to the tribe. Therass knew that the tribe had forgotten the covetous spirit and granted it power to walk amongst them once more.

Will you retrieve the tribe’s stolen spirit? Thrangass pressed mercilessly through Therass’s reverie.

Yes, Soulkeeper. Said Therass

Thrangass’s eyes widened. There was shock in his expression, for Therass rarely acceded to the Soulkeeper’s demands. But in his widened eyes, like the first signs of a molding wedge of cheese, lay sprouts of purest pleasure.

Now leave, Thrangass. Leave my home and gather the Council of Eight.

Your will be done. Thrangass acquiesced, knowing that other concessions could be earned at a later date. Thrangass slid slickly out of the hut and was gone.

Yes, my will be done, Keeper, Therass mused to himself, but never by you.

In the midst of his thoughts, Therass’s newborn son loudly reasserted his right to life. The child had fed from his mother. That had been two hours past when he still had a mother. Therass secured the fussing infant as tenderly as he knew how and walked outside towards the nearest corral of tribal herd beasts.

Twenty minutes later, Therass strode into the council chamber located at the village center. A contented child smelling slightly of souring goat’s milk hung from a harness on Therass’s back.

The council was assembled. The Cardinals stood at the four main compass points. The Intermediaries were arrayed three feet back from the perimeter of that square and positioned on the four intermediate compass points. Thrangass was crouched in front of the Eastern Cardinal, for he had called the council to assemble and so assumed the position of the rising sun.

Therass had moved to the center of the room and faced North. The Northern Cardinal held a desire for justice naked on his face. Outside the chamber, Therass heard the rhythmic twang, tap, thud from the chords of the biddenbau. He began to rotate to his left. The Western Cardinal’s expression was a sooty duplicate of the Northern Cardinal’s face. Therass smelled grimy dirt and anger. He faced south. Sumava stood there. His expression and posture were filled with an excited rage. It was a wonder that he maintained the motionless attitude required for an assembly’s inception. Therass felt coals crumble under his feet and dust latch onto his lower limbs. At the edge of his field of vision, Therass saw the Soulkeeper rise to his feet. Therass pointed to face him and the Eastern Cardinal. Therass paced backwards three times and stood before the Western Cardinal. He raised his arms high above his head. His arms dropped to his side.

Now let it begin, intoned each individual in the chamber.

Everyone turned his eyes to the Southern Cardinal. Oral tradition held that the Hassite’s first fathers had arisen on the southern isles. From there they had migrated north. Sumava had the right to first speech.

His question poured out of him impatiently, Is it true that the spirit, which served as Therass’s wife, was taken forcibly from the tribe?

Yes. Replied Therass and Thrangass in concert.

By dark arts. Added the Soulkeeper.

Spirits be praised for the intuition of the Soulkeeper, said Sumava. Therass had been thinking the same thing, in tones not nearly as complimentary.

Very well, grumbled the Northern, how do we recover this stolen soul?

In grief, Therass had wondered the same.

Thrangass shared the answer, We will not. We are called to perform justice, not rescue. The only soul we will find is the one guilty of this abomination!

A shiver ran through the council. Some members trembled with rage. Others were alive with anticipation. Therass could barely suppress his grief. Thrangass’s words rang true. They would not find Sareh’s spirit. She would never return.

So Therass mourned.

And Therass remembered. He recalled her dusky pearl skin. He remembered her strength. She had been strong of will. She had been strong of body. Sareh had shown that strength in the field, in the hunt, and in the home.

The council carried on around Therass. Each Cardinal asked a single question. Each Intermediate spoke of the preparations of his quadrant’s warriors and rhythm-makers. Tears coursed freely from Therass’s eyes. The council spoke only of war now. Disposition and destinations for conscripts and commanders were discussed. Routes of assault were noted. Proper rhythms were prepared, and each council member prepared to carry the message back to his stewardship.

Therass remembered an afternoon ending gently in a sun-fueled explosion of purples, oranges, and smoky wisps of white cloud. He and his Sareh had strolled near the banks of the river Neddar. He could still feel her slender, tapered fingers laced with his thicker digits. Sareh had carried a slightly sweet scent of eucalyptus and thyme. After long moments with no sound but the slap of the river on earth, Sareh leaned towards him and asked, How will it be when I am gone? The question ripped Therass from his reverie.

The Western Cardinal asked, And when we are gone?

Therass was listening now. His misty green eyes had crystallized to pale green emeralds tossed on a field of white.

We will have left a message, hissed Thrangass, the Great Nations will never again take advantage of our people. Their infidel priests will not dare to taint our spirits with their foul beliefs. He spat this last as the vilest of curses. Then in a blink’s lifespan, his visage twisted from that of an enraged adder to one of a patient grandfather. Thrangass grew quiet and coiled himself up again. Therass had scanned the faces of the council. From that brief reconnaissance, he knew that his people were going to war. The motives were more varied than the members of the council. Thaanchi, the Northern Cardinal likely felt that war was the quickest way to increase the diminishing numbers of the tribe’s flocks. His counterpart Sumava just as likely fervently believed in his Soulkeeper’s call for justice. Therass could see the liquid fanatic devotion blossoming from Sumava’s widened pores. Some of the intermediates likely believed that this brewing storm would be a pilgrimage and passage to higher power.

Therass would lead them. Therass would find woman’s milk for his son. He would find his wife’s soulthief. Then Therass would go dancing to his death.

MATTIE HARRLUN HAD seen the Hassite herds on the move earlier that morning. The deluge of dust was an unmistakable herald of the herdsmen’s migration. While it was earlier in the year than normal for the Hassites to seek higher pasture, the winter had been unusually warm. Stopping to rest, Mattie noticed that the green brown dust still hung thickly in the air.

Must’ve been a bumper crop of lambs, the farmer mused to himself. As his words faded and flew away on the rising breeze, Mattie began to hear a sound that filled him with an uneasy sense of horror.

Mattie’s mouth was suddenly so dry he could neither spit nor swear. He dropped his planting implements and began to run.

Tereza! Mattie shrieked at his wife, Get the little ‘un!

Tereza Harrlun emerged from their small adobe home. She heard the ragged fear in her husband’s cry, but a calming whisper in her soul told her that she and her son would live this day.

Run! howled Mattie.

Tereza stood calmly in the doorway to their home. Two-year-old Marr Harrlun held a tiny fistful of Tereza’s skirts as he stood beside her and asked, Wats happenin, Mama?

I don’t know, dear. I do not know.

Mattie had closed to within ten yards of the house. With a cry, he fell hard to the earth. Mattie’s right leg stayed perched at an unnatural angle supported by a six-foot-long shaft passing through his calf and planted in the rough, dark earth.

The Hassite’s primary sources of food were their own herds and the schools of tucunare making their homes in the Neddar river. Hassites hunted these crafty fish from above the waters. The Hassites used longbows to launch bone-tipped arrows as long as a man is tall. The arrows effectively pinned an impaled tucunare in place. To a Hassite archer, Mattie was nothing more than a tucunare on two legs. The point was driven home when a second arrow penetrated Mattie’s chest cavity, and the earth grew darker with his blood. The farmer’s head snapped up at the intrusion. His eyes locked on his wife’s face.

Surprise moved across his eyes quickly to be replaced by the peace of death.

Tereza snatched little Marr and held him tight to her right shoulder. Then the killers began to emerge from the trees. They moved with a staccato side-to-side step. Half a dozen of them surrounded Tereza and Marr. She offered no resistance as one of the guant seven-foot tall figures moved past her and assumed a stooped position facing into Tereza’s home. Three of his companions simultaneously formed three other corners of a box facing outward. Even in a one location, the fighters swayed back and forth. They never stood on two feet. Instead their feet crossed over one another, lifted and crossed again. The entire motion made their bodies undulate like the mountain firs caught in a windstorm. Then the fifth warrior stepped in front of Tereza.

Marr began to whimper.

The man’s face would have been kind except for the cruel scars which ran in parallel lines along his temples.

A crisp mountain wind curled around the house and threw itself into the dirt, kicking up a diminutive whirlwind of dust and seed.

The man’s hand snapped into place on Tereza’s full breast. He squeezed hard. The pressure brought tears of shock and shame to Tereza’s overcast blue eyes. Images of her husband’s dead body and her own impending violation filled her mind. Tereza bit savagely on her lower lip to freeze a fear-filled cry in her throat. As the fear began to leak out her eyes and squeeze its way through her teeth, the assailant released the offending grip. Tereza sucked audible relief through her teeth.

She felt a spreading wet spot on her coarse woolen blouse. The warrior looked with deep satisfaction at the growing milk stain. He motioned for Tereza to follow him. His gesture left no doubt in Tereza’s mind as to her fate if she refused to follow him.

The brute made a series of percussive clicks with his tongue and teeth. His companions turned in response to the sounds, and as a unit they began moving back down the hillside. Tereza walked meekly among her oversized captors. As they drew near the forest edge, Tereza’s ears caught the sound of the Hassite chords of war. The woods opened and hungrily swallowed the group whole. Marr’s sobs were dimmed by the carpet of needles. The sounds of the Hassite instruments clicked and rebounded weirdly off the forest pines.

Then, everything was still.

Chapter 2 A Traveling Menagerie

The citadel door swung inward heavily. Elara tugged severely at her younger brother’s sleeve. Together they marched, she seriously, he disinterestedly, to the front pew of twenty. There awaited two dustless, lonely spaces next to the other six members of their family. Elara’s father presented her with a madcap grin and a wink. Her lower lip pushed its way ahead of her upper as she smiled with a pout in return. Elara settled sweetly into her spot on the pew. Her twelve-year-old toes dangled mere inches above the hard-packed earthen floor. Glancing down, she saw them wave up at her as she stretched them closer to the ground.

As she released his sleeve, her brother Nogalo crumpled to the bench like so much canvas on the sail of a sandsled. His eyelids collapsed just as catastrophically and he was already sliding into sleep. His hands remained alert. Noga’s hands tapped out an undecipherable rhythm on the edge of his seat.

Ombert rose.

Assuming a position central to the view of his audience, he began to teach. Today, Ombert reflected aloud on the end of this life and the world beyond death. Village residents stood with questions. They stood with comments. The people stood with answers to inquiries posed by Ombert. As the sun crept an hour further west in his search for the moon, Ombert invited Elara’s mother Rainne to share a song of passage with the congregation. Rainne stood. Gently as a mother pours a glass of milk for her toddler, Rainne began to fill the open spaces with music.

My love would often whisper to me

Of my own admirable beauty

Blind to the vision I never heard

The sincere soft spoken words

Now my love is fallen

Can no more come calling

Though I know love carries on

My heart feels a colder song.

Love would often say softly to me

See, believe, know you can be

Deaf to the truth I never saw

My own inner beauty

Now my love is fallen

Can no more come calling

Tears hummed softly down Rainne’s face as she ended the song.

Refreshed by the splash of Rainne’s tears and the wash of her song, the audience arose and milled leisurely toward their homes.

Like a prairie dog startled by the passage of a herd, Nogalo’s head sprang up and he looked around warily. He chuckled. Noga stood with the rest of his family. As a community they washed towards the door.

Elara chirped and giggled with the youngest Linn girl Leie. By no small conspiracy of conception and birth, Nogal and Leie were currently the same age. The Linn family emerged from the citadel to an assault of light, life, and sound.

Elara’s eyelids raced furiously up and down as her pupils lunged inward. Like a well-disciplined soldier, her hand snapped to a crisp salute, shading her watery eyes.

To the west, harbored below the plateau of Skye, a thundercloud of desert dust coalesced. Within the veil great thundering shook the ground. Unintelligible shouts flashed white hot through the air. Metal struck metal. The electricity of numerous bodies crackled and sizzled below Elara.

Papa, what is it? breathed Elara in a voice baked with wonder and iced with a sugary fear of the unknown.

Well, he chuckled, "I have an idea, but we’ll wait and let you find out on a full stomach.

Elara allowed herself to begrudgingly be guided away from Skye’s edge. Then an idea flowered fully in her mind.

Leie! she called. I’ll race you home, little sister. Her nine-year-old sister gladly agreed and together they dashed towards home.

Coming through the door together, they darted in to the kitchen and sprinkled the family table with cutlery and flatware.

Not long afterwards, the rest of the family arrived. Mother Rainne served plates of steaming boiled potatoes topped with goat cheese. Try though they might, the Linn parents were unable to contain the frenzied excitement of their two girls. Elara and Leie disposed of their food as quickly as it was deposited in front of them. Then they engaged in a spontaneous tug of war with their father’s arms. They begged, pleaded, and cajoled to see what was happening in the fields west of town. He gave consent.

The two sisters were as swift as a sandstorm blowing out the door and across the village. At the edge of town, a breath of wind that had been following the two girls surged past them and just as suddenly summoned the obscuring dust to other venues.

In the freshly cleared air the girls saw rainbows draped upon an enormous pole. The multicolored reams of cloth formed an effective and dazzling deterrent to prying eyes. The two sisters sighed in silent wonder at the virtuosity of color and the tent that could easily hold four of their family’s home.

Though unable to see the wonders inside the multicolored canvas monstrosity, sounds still snuck out from the tent flaps. The sounds were wonderfully alien to Elara. The dull roar of multiple voices shouting combined with the rumbling of large masses moving. A dull clatter of building materials and the whip crack of hammer and nail joined the cacophony. Elara was sure that someone had netted a thunderstorm and bottled it up just like the tale of Ceso Willingheart, the first Viuvan outrider who cleared the heartland of the nation by netting and riding an entire herd of sand and thunderstorms out over the edge of the Widow’s Cliffs. She hoped that the captor of this particular storm would let others in to see.

The girls were so enthralled by the inside-out kaleidoscope that they did not see the stranger approach. Elara finally noticed him when the sun greedily snatched up his shadow and cast it roughly on the ground near Elara’s feet. She skipped backwards. Elara’s eyes followed the length of the shadow. It ended where two stumplike feet began. The feet were shoeless and painted with muddy patches. Jaundiced, jagged toenails half the size of Elara’s hands stood guard over the feet. The toes waved impatiently. Elara looked quickly from toes to top. There she was greeted by a glare made entirely ineffective by a face filled with below-average intelligence and above-average kindness.

Nothing to see, said the friendly glaring face. You am come back tomorrow.

With an assurance bred from long years of successful intimidation, the man turned and walked towards another gawking group.

Elara looked at Leie. Her sister grinned back. They both giggled and skipped home. Neither suspected the part that would be played by an inhabitant of that dusty rainbow pavilion.

The next day could not pass quickly enough for Elara. The morning hours blurred together in a flurry of sweeping, scrubbing, singing and tending to Leie’s two-goat herd. Lunch was a memory of shoveling, chewing and repeating. Even a game of tossing a wooden disc back and forth with her siblings seemed drudgery.

When her mother announced that it was time to go, Elara’s clothes practically flew off of her and hung trembling in the air as she changed into cleaner attire. She then rushed to the door and waited for her family.

The Linns crossed the village quickly and arrived at the end of a moderately long line of their neighbors. Children of various ages darted in and out of the press of people. The line appeared an asp trying to contain a family of kangaroo rats in its belly.

Elara’s father exchanged a few silver ingots with the beefy man seated outside the pavilion and received a handful of rectangular wooden chips in return. Shuffling forward with the crowd, the wooden chips were distributed one to each member of the family. Then, under the scrutinizing eye of the grubby giant Elara had encountered yesterday, she and her family crossed the threshold.

All Elara’s senses were instantly whisked to a celebration. The scent of frosting sweets coupled with the odor of already eaten meats and meals. Elara’s nose sighed with satisfaction and wrinkled in disgust. Drums, shouts, and sighs of wonder all chorused together to occupy Elara’s ears.

Her eyes could not pick a final target. They jerked randomly to the left. There sat a glass box filled with water and creatures that appeared to be floating serpents with mouths bursting with sharp white teeth. Her eyes flicked away from their hungry grins to the right. In that direction huge, gray, wrinkled monstrosities with ears like sails and serpentine noses danced around a star-stenciled platform, directed by a dwarf wearing a hat in imitation of his charges.

Drifting slowly forward, she looked left again. A man breathed billowing plumes of flame. She looked right and saw a midget of a man riding tall in the saddle of an eight-legged chittering insect half-again the size of Elara.

Look! Lara Looklooklook! Leie gasped at Elara’s side. She glanced at her little sister and saw a small arm and index finger pointing rigidly upwards and further into the tent from where they stood. Elara’s gaze bounced quickly back in the direction her sister’s finger indicated.

What she saw filled Elara with a gasp that was equal parts wonder and shock.

Oh Papa! Won’t he fall? she asked. Her twelve-year-old mind needed the assurance any adult is automatically qualified to give.

No, Elara. Her father said, though inwardly he wondered himself, "Why would they put him up there if he was just going to fall?"

Her father’s response made sense to Elara. She put any worry out of her mind.

Then they began to hear a compelling voice raised to be heard above the din of the spectators.

Come one and all! Come see the wonder of Wandair! Marvel at our master acrobat of the air! The announcer, garbed in a multi-hued, feather-lined cape, was a flightless bird squawking for all to hear about his flying cousin. He continued his chant.

Behold! Look up and marvel! The half pint once underfoot, now fancy foots over us! Be amazed at Shad O-Be-riuuuuuuus! This last was delivered with a flapping flourish of his cape and a voice trilling up a two-octave scale.

Compelled by the announcer’s directing gesture Elara looked upward again.

A rough-hewn, two-foot diameter beam sat securely atop two of the supporting columns on opposite sides of the tent. The beam ran the diameter of the pavilion and was studded at three-foot intervals with chains secured on eyehooks. The chains hung down five feet where pairs of chains shared the weight of two-foot-long round timbers each a foot in diameter. To the bottom of these timbers were attached fine silk ropes twenty feet long that supported trapeze swings. From the swings to the ground was at least the distance from the Linn family roof to the ground. Elara could tell that distance because she had foolishly jumped it just last summer. Her twisted ankle and bruised side had only recently stopped aching. Sitting serenely atop the thirty-five-foot supporting column on Elara’s right sat a man whose head would likely only reach the top of Elara’s ribcage. His coal-black hair striped with silver and grey flowed form his head to his shoulders. He was garbed in snug tights and tunic that had obviously been selected for ease of movement and a color scheme that would be hard to miss. Accenting the entire outfit was an emerald green cloak that caught the torchlight from below with the daylight from above and blended them together in a sparkling montage.

With the completion of the announcer’s introduction, the acrobats on lower platforms lunged outward and fell across the distance to their swings. An astounding choreography followed.

The trapeze artists flexed their bodies backwards and forwards to fuel the motion of the swing. Predetermined signals from a hidden drum motivated them. With cymbal crashes, the acrobats released their swings. Twisting, flipping, and gyrating through the air, swingers laid hold of the platform at the same time as their partners vaulted overhead to continue the motion of the swing.

The crowd murmured shock.

Elara looked up.

The upper timbers undulated in a seemingly random fashion. Strolling blissfully along the first timber was the child-sized man introduced to them all as Shad. Elara could see by the shape of his face that he was whistling.

At the center of the log, he pirouetted effortlessly. Elara felt her hand slap to her mouth with surprise. Continuing his thirty-foot-high walk, Shad approached the first gap. Elara’s hand moved to her eyes, but somehow left gaps in the fingers that clearly showed the continuing spectacle.

Leaning casually on the swaying chain thirty feet above the crowd, the performer produced a silky green apple from within his cloak. Everyone could see him breathe open-mouthed upon the apple and then wipe it clean on the shoulder of his cloak. He bit into the tart apple.

In a flash, Shad tossed the apple into the air. Then he cartwheeled across the intervening space, spun on one hand with the motion of the passing log and returned to his feet, mirroring the carefree attitude he had maintained on the first timber.

The crowd exploded with enthusiastic applause.

The apple landed.

The crowd’s front row jumped back with shock as green and white chunks of fruit fell amongst them, and smoke puffed into the air around them.

Amusement rippled through the audience. Everyone looked upward again to discover that Shad the Extraordinaire had crossed the second timber. He stood in a half squat swinging his arms in apparent preparation to jump. Shad leapt forward.

Female spectators screamed.

Fearless men cried out.

Elara heard someone retching nearby.

Shad had apparently mistimed his jump and was falling into open air with a terrified look on his face.

His left arm flailed wildly.

His cloak trailed green and blue behind him.

His right hand closed firmly around a metal bar secured parallel to the underside of the third timber. Shad’s cloak caught up to and covered him in a sapphire emerald swirl. When it swept away again, Shad was revealed with a positively impish grin. His expression clearly said, Fooled you all!

Across the distance, Elara caught Shad’s eye.

The lines around his eyes widened ever so slightly in a combination of surprised relief. Then Shad began to swing hand over hand to the other end of the still swinging third timber. Amidst the continued clapping of the astounded spectators, Shad hung by both hands from the last rung. With a heave, he thrust himself upward into a back flip. At two hundred and seventy degrees, Shad snatched the chain of the fourth and final timber. He swung around it once, twice and came to his feet.

With the echoes of the crowd’s gasp still audible, Shad scurried along the fourth timber, somersaulted and vaulted to the waiting platform. With pure panache Shad bowed twice, then pulled himself backwards out of sight.