The Game Piece: Homeward I

by Barb Hendee

  Homeward:

  The Game Piece

  Barb Hendee

  T·N·D·S

  Tales from the world of

  the Noble Dead Saga

  Copyright

  Published by Barb and J.C. Hendee / NobleDead.org

  First Edition, April 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Barb and J.C. Hendee

  eISBN: 9780985561604

  BNID: 2940014558389

  ASIN: B007XK17WA

  ISBN-13: 9780985561604

  ISBN-10: 0985561602

  Design, layout, and cover art by J.C. Hendee.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior contractual or written permission of the copyright owner of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or deceased, businesses establishments, events, or locales is entirely incidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Colophon

  Other Works

  “The Game Piece”

  The Game Piece

  Reluctantly, Loni packed an overnight satchel, stuffing in little more than a tunic, a pair of pants, and a small brush to clean his teeth. He hated visiting his family more than anything in the world, mainly because he never felt like he belonged there.

  Looking around his small, private room at the branch of the Guild of Sagecraft among the Lhoin’na—[Those] of the Glade, or the elves, as humans called them—he was well aware that he didn’t belong here either.

  His satchel lay on a bunk that resembled a shelf of wood growing directly out from the wall, with a simple linen-covered mattress. Beside the bed was a desk with a single chair. The desk was covered with quills, ink, and a few unread books.

  This was the room of a scholar.

  But he was no scholar; he’d only applied here three years back because his father insisted that he consider some form of vocation, some way to contribute to his people and the community at large.

  His father and his older brother were both members of the Shé’ith—what humans sometimes called the “Serentiers.” The Shé’ith were military guardians who patrolled the people’s vast forest territory, all of its enclaves, great and small, and this heart of it all, the great city called a’Ghràihlôn’na—Blessed of the Woods. Although Loni’s father had begun training him early to follow in the same footsteps, by ten years old, Loni had not developed a hint of interest in becoming one of the Shé’ith.

  The problem was that, as more years passed, he developed no interest in becoming anything else either. Studying at the guild had been chosen by default.

  So, at the age of seventeen, and in desperation, he’d applied to become an initiate. He was too old and he knew it, but his father held some influence with the guild’s premin counsel, and so he’d been admitted. In the three years since then, of course he wasn’t ready to apply for journeyor status to one of the five orders. He was the oldest initiate in the entire branch, and at the age of twenty, the tan initiate’s robe that he always wore was becoming ridiculous.

  Loni didn’t like to be ridiculous. What he did like was being left alone.

  In that sense, the guild had provided a haven. He had a private room here, away from his family, and he could normally find a dozen reasons throughout the day to escape from any and all company. Of course his present status required attending classes, lectures, and seminars, but he could sit apart, pretend to take notes, and then vanish afterward.

  For him, the main attraction of joining the guild had been the opportunity for privacy.

  Looking down at his packed satchel on the bunk, he sighed just as a knock sounded on the door.

  “Yes?” he called.

  When the door opened, he saw the other benefit he’d found here: a tall, stooped man in a gray robe, Domin Aur’andàl.

  “Are you ready?” the domin asked. “Your father made it clear he expected you by the midday meal.”

  “Yes, I’m ready.”

  Domin Aur’andàl had a kind face and quiet manner that put Loni at ease. His ears were unusually long, their pointed ends sticking up through his streaked hair. He never judged anyone and often expressed that everyone had their own path to follow in this world. Should Loni have put enough effort into his studies and applied for journeyor’s status, he would have chosen the order of cathology just to work under Domin Aur’andàl’s tutelage.

  But the chance of that was remote. He had no interest in spending day after day bent over a table studying texts related to geography, languages, history, and other cultures… or taking part in everything that cathologers did to safeguard all the knowledge that the guild collected. He had only one intense historical interest, and he’d exhausted the limited accounts on that long ago.

  Loni knew he didn’t belong here, but returning to his parents’ home was a far worse alternative.

  Yet now, he was forced to do so for a day and a night.

  “It may be not be so terrible,” Domin Aur’andàl said with a slight smile, which faded. “This betrothal is important to your father, so try to please him if you can today.”

  Loni looked across the room without answering. If he could have spoken his thoughts to anyone, it would have been Domin Aur’andàl, but he could not. Today would be grueling, with no possibility of escape.

  His striking older brother, Daffyed, had somehow gained a betrothal to the daughter of a family of barge masters who lived and worked along the branching rivers to the east. Apparently, Daffyed had met the girl while riding patrol of the outer territories with his contingent. Afterwards, he’d gone back to seek her. Due to the wealth of the elven barge masters, a connection by marriage with one of their families was considered an honor.

  The girl and her parents—along with various other relatives—were arriving in a’Ghràihlôn’na today to officially meet with Daffyed’s family. Unfortunately, this included Loni. He could imagine his father bursting with pride at yet another of Daffyed’s great accomplishments. Sitting through the midday meal and a social afternoon would be torturous enough, but then would come dinner and later, more serious discussion. He wasn’t sure he could bear it.

  “You’ll be fine,” said Domin Aur’andàl, as if reading his face.

  Loni picked up his satchel. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  The domin glanced away.

  He also knew Loni didn’t belong here but had allowed the charade to continue, at least for now. Stepping aside, he made room for Loni to walk past him into the passageway of smooth wood.

  “Then I’ll see you at breakfast,” Aur’andàl said.

  Loni nodded in resignation and headed down the sloping passage into a foyer, walking out the doorway of the giant redwood tree and into the guild’s round courtyard. Although like the rest of the city, he’d always found the guild’s courtyard far too manicured, he never ceased to marvel at the natural structure of the guild itself.

  Perhaps as old as the Forgotten History, a ring of giant redwoods had melded into one massive form, one life. Hints of once separate trunks bulged from its mass. Over a thousand years, the redwoods had grown so vast that they were now one great circle encompassing the scholarly community within.

  Various rooms, archives, offices, and dining halls formed a kind of honeycomb inside the redwoods themselves, and the courtyard was a giant circle, filled with gardens and flowering trees and pathways.

  At times,
Loni genuinely wished he had a true calling, but he didn’t think on such things today. Instead, he headed for the gate out of the guild grounds. He couldn’t avoid his fate any longer.

  · · · · ·

  Once outside the guild, with his satchel hoisted over one shoulder, Loni walked through the great city of trees that was a’Ghràihlôn’na.

  Cleared stretches for paths were paved with packed gravel and natural stone slabs. Gardens and alcoves of flora flowed around buildings and even up the bases of trees in tendril vines of glistening green leaves and flowering buds. More earthbound buildings, constructed from timber and sometimes stone, existed here than in the outer settlements. But tiers of higher structures overwhelmed their abundance up in the forest canopy and all the way beyond sight.

  Loni passed countless gardens over-laden with heavy blooms without really seeing them. Every inch of the city seemed to posses carefully nurtured enclaves that stood out only from the natural landscape by the density of crafted design. But like the courtyard of the guild, Loni found it all far too manicured… far too intentional.

  He longed for something else. As he walked, his mind escaped to the one place where he was happy: to the folktales and myths told by his grandmother of their people’s ancestors who had left here perhaps a thousand years ago under the guidance of the great Sorhkafâré—the Light Upon the Grass.

  He could still hear the magic in her voice as it softly rolled on…

  Towards the end of the war, when all seemed lost, Sorhkafâré took a cutting from Chârmun, the immense tree at the heart of Aonnis Lhoin’n—First Glade—which is still with us. He then gathered those willing to follow him and took them east. He left any humans with him behind, though no one knows why, but even they whispered the story of his great feats in the war for a few more generations. In any tales that still mention him and his followers, they are now only remembered as the Departed. Whatever became of them, no one truly knows…

  There wasn’t much more to the story than this. Only recently had the guild come to suspect that Sorhkafâré had settled somewhere on the eastern continent.

  Loni’s grandmother had passed over a few years ago, and he still missed her. She was the only one of his family who’d talked to him. But he could not stop thinking how those wild, brave people had left this place and gone to create a new world on the eastern continent. He could almost see their descendants in his mind: fiercely independent, with no need for perfectly pruned gardens and perfect lives laid out before them by choosing a vocation and working toward it.

  He also wondered if this was the reason why he’d always felt so out of place, like a throwback to a time when life was for the discovery of it and not just a choice for fitting in. He did not belong in his parents’ house. He felt he did not belong in this city, with these people. Perhaps he truly belonged with the descendents of those who had left so long ago with Sorhkafâré.

  Coming back to himself, he realized he’d reached his family home, a large stone structure on the west side of the city. A vine of peach rose blossoms stretched above the doorway, and his mother always plucked any that began to wilt so that it always maintained such perfection. The stable was not far away, as both his brother and father liked to keep their horses close. He wasn’t ready to face either of them. Worse, he had no interest in meeting the girl his brother was to marry.

  To his chagrin, all three members of his family were standing in front of the house, waiting.

  “You’re almost late,” his father said.

  Typical. He was on time, yet his father pointed out that he was almost late.

  “Why didn’t you change your clothes?” his mother asked. “Anything else would be preferable.”

  Loni looked down at himself, at his long tan initiate’s robe. Mother was right; he should have thought to change before leaving the guild and packed the robe instead of packing his breeches and shirt.

  His father and brother were shining examples of the finest of the Shé’ith. Their amber irises glowed by the sun’s light within tan, triangular faces. They wore their wheat-colored hair in an identical fashion, pulled up and back in high tails held by single silver rings, so the narrow tips of their elongated ears were plain to see. They were garbed in tawny leather vestments with swirling steel garnishes to match sparkling spaulders on their shoulders. Each wore a sash the color of pale gold running diagonally over his chest. Long and narrow sword hilts, slightly curved, protruded over their right shoulders.

  Standing side by side, they might be an impressive sight, but not to Loni. He’d seen enough of them over a lifetime.

  His slender mother was nearly as tall as his father, and she’d arranged her blond hair in an elaborate manner for the occasion, with much of it on top of her head and a few carefully placed tendrils hanging down. She wore a sleeveless white dress with delicate wooden bracelets on her wrists. Even Loni had to admit she looked lovely.

  By contrast, Loni was shorter than any of them. His eyes were almost dark enough to be considered light brown, like his hair, which he’d forgotten to comb this morning.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “Do I have time to change?”

  “No,” his father said, turning slightly to the right.

  At the sound of horse’s hooves, Loni realized their visitors were upon them. He took note of a broad-shouldered, middle-aged man at the head of the entourage, who dismounted from a muscular horse and greeted Loni’s father politely. He must be the impending bride’s father.

  “It is good of your family to welcome us,” he said politely.

  After that, Loni grew hopelessly lost as several young women, one middle-aged woman, and an old woman were suddenly also in line to be greeted. There were young men as well—probably brothers—and Loni was unable to keep anyone straight as his father motioned toward him.

  “And this is our younger son, Loni, who is pursuing his studies at the guild.”

  That sounded respectable enough, but he could feel several sets of eyes moving up and down over his unkempt hair and tan robe. Their scrutiny did not last long. He wasn’t worth too much scrutiny.

  Then a smallish young woman was being drawn forward through the crowd of visitors. The broad-shouldered man turned and said, “My youngest daughter, Alianna.”

  Loni glanced at Daffyed. His brother’s normally emotionless eyes flashed with pride. This had to be the prospective bride.

  She was fragile in appearance with large eyes and wheat-gold hair hanging to the tops of her thighs. Her gown was made of the finest shéot’a cloth, belted in around her tiny waist, with matching braided shéot’a bracelets around her wrists. By all accepted standards, she was quite pretty, though he had no interest in whomever his brother would marry. But as further introductions were made, he realized that she had not once looked at Daffyed.

  Instead, Alianna glanced furtively at him.

  · · · · ·

  The midday meal proved every bit as grueling as Loni had anticipated, filled with polite, meaningless chatter dominated by both sets of parents. Daffyed was quiet, but he rarely said anything on a normal day. Alianna was nearly silent, only occasionally answering questions with a “yes” or “no.”

  As soon as the meal was over, Loni’s father suggested the men go to the stable and look at a new foal his favorite mare had birthed, leaving the women to talk amongst themselves. As the men headed out and the women began to congregate, Loni slipped out the back door. No one would miss him.

  Once outside, he headed north until he reached the city’s fringe and passed through a living arch of two trees grown together high above. Breathing deeply, he stepped off the main road into the wild forest beyond civilization. Although there were paths, endless masses of twisting vines and spreading ferns meshed tightly between the trees on both sides. The intertwined canopy overhead nearly blocked out the sun’s light.

  He knew this part of the forest well, as his grandmother had brought him here many times. But he’d only taken two more steps when a voice sounded
behind him.

  “Where are you going?”

  He whirled to see Alianna standing in the city’s archway in her fine shéot’a gown. He knew he should take her right back to the house, but he had no intention of doing that. He might get trapped by one of his parents.

  To his further consternation, Alianna came toward him through the vines and ferns.

  How was he to get rid of her?

  “You’ll ruin that dress out here,” he said. “You’d better go back.”

  “But where are you going?” she asked again, urgently this time, as if she truly wanted an answer.

  He wasn’t skilled at talking to people, but still…

  “I sometimes walk out to Aonnis Lhoin’a to see Chârmun,” he said. “My grandmother told me of a woman called Vreuvillä, who lives somewhere out beyond the glade, and is supposedly one of what was once called the Foirfeahkan. I had always hoped to meet her but never have.”

  Alianna came closer, not appearing to care when her gown caught on the underbrush. “Of the Foirfeahkan… truly?”

  He nodded, understanding her need to question his claim. From what he’d learned when he actually studied at the guild, the Foirfeahkan were—had once been—a spiritual sect, though their origins couldn’t be traced. Animistic in ideology, they believed in the spiritual—ethereal and sacred rather than theistic—that existed within this world and not some other realm. This was similar to what his people now believed, but perhaps more primal… like those faraway descendants of the Departed. Foirfeahkan considered the center or nexus of it all was in one tree, Chârmun in Aonnis Lhoin’a—First Glade. But now they were almost more myth than reality.

  Few had ever seen this woman of the wild. Some said she ran with the majay-hì, the huge sacred wolves who served as the inner guardians of the forest. And even they were seldom seen.

  “Your grandmother told you of this woman?” Alianna asked.