When the elders had made him a master at the setting of the sun, they had quoted the long line of spirit talker masters who had come before him while he stood respectfully with his head bowed. The ceremony had looked comically like a sheepish adult being reprimanded by a flock of overly serious children. Waylaid had been humble and respectful, not traits for which the Fomor were known.
The Fomor tended to wear tent-like swaths of woven linen or wool, bound with thick hemp twine into a complicated robe of folds and pockets. Instead Waylaid, like a normal Bolg, wore a simple belted woolen kilt and an open vest made of thick sheepskin. Crossing his chest, visible through the front of his vest, was a pair of thick leather straps, a bandolier that most Bolg used to carry bags, knives, and swords. At their center where they crossed, these straps held a box made from a turtle shell. This was like old Imregor, who had carried his spirit tools next to his heart.
The Fomor also said that their form was perfect and didn’t mark their body in any way. They thought that any disfigurement of a person made them unfit to lead, rule, or speak with the gods. The man before him had moved far from the Fomor ideal. He was undressed, disfigured, broken, and tattooed. He had left their culture and become a Bolg.
Fomor have always been shepherds and fishermen, living along the ridges and rocks above the deep bays, controlling much of the high lands and deep rivers of Pywer. Their rulers and priests owned vast fortresses made of white stones and controlled immense magic and wealth, but they were thought to be bleak, solitary creatures. No Bolg lived there of their own free will, as the cruel humor of the Fomor was said to be greater than a smaller man could survive.
Piju feared the tales of Fomor cruelty, for in this way perhaps, Waylaid was as much a Fomor as a Bolg. All that was known of him was that he was huge, hideous, humorless, and solitary.
The Bolg of Leest, Harran’s uncle in fact, had found Waylaid at the edge of the sea cliff and brought him into the village. Lynneth, the apprentice seer, had set his broken knee, burned the wounds on his back and foot, purifying him, and generally treated his injuries.
He had clearly been attacked by men with axes, perhaps the bronze-bladed war axes of the Fomor. It was thought that the monster was ambushed as there was no sign left on the cliff of any battle between armies. With no further information the fertile imagination of the isolated village of Leest grew terrible tales about the Fomor and the poor, broken man they had rescued. He never gave them his real name, so, over the year he lived among them, the strange man became known as Waylaid.
Harran had told Piju to go talk to him. The Kerrick had given him the same advice, but Piju had never worked up the courage to speak to him before tonight.
The young man knelt across the fire from the scarred giant, watching him slowly saw through each braid with a black stone knife wrapped in a leather grip. Piju shivered, imagining the knife drenched in blood.
Piju had been told by the Kerrick that each black braid symbolized something important: worship of the hateful Fomor Gods, promises to be kept, or treaties among tribes. But each one was cut. Each braid was carefully sawed free, prayed over, and ceremoniously laid in the fire.
The Bolg tattoos for battles of spirit were commonly marked with yellow ink on the forehead above the eyes. It was just a pale trace on his dark skin, but Waylaid had one, like a tree with an eye, for the demon of the fields. Lynneth had made that mark, but Piju honestly didn’t want a spirit mark and didn’t want to know about the demon.
Hunting came easily to Piju; though his first years had been spent in a boat, not the woods. His skills had quickly overtaken most children his age. His fight against the wolves showed everyone that he was brave, but the spirit world frankly frightened him and left him no hope. How could you defeat such a creature with a spear or capture it in a net?
It was suddenly clear to Piju that Waylaid would take Lynneth as a journeyman; she needed further teaching on the spirit world, and Piju did not. Seeking out the giant was a waste of time, so he had no choice left but the Abernehh.
Piju knelt across the fire from the giant and waited. He felt like throwing his hands up in frustration and leaving. Perhaps he should take a boat and some ice-distilled juice and chase his doom. Still, he had been hunting with Kerrick for nearly four years. You don’t just quit in the middle. Frustration was no different than bad weather. If conditions are bad, you wait for them to get better. Piju was very good at waiting. He straightened his breeches as he crouched, to keep them from pulling. He adjusted his cross-strapped baldric beneath his vest, tilted his bow to keep the tips off the ground, checked that the cap was on his sheaf of arrows to keep water out, and made sure that his knife hadn’t slipped. It was a single pass of hand motions, long practiced. A single flip of fabric covered his back, head, and arms with the cloak, leaving his front free to feel the fire. He focused on the man in front of him, and quieted his motions. Time passed.
The question came as though in the middle of a conversation, without any throat clearing or gathering gestures.
“Are you interested in the spirits, boy? Huh?” Waylaid’s voice was rough stones in a dark path, his question mark like the barking of a dog.
Piju felt a sudden fear, but stilled it. He looked at Waylaid, chewed his lip, and thought. He could lie, or he could tell the truth; which was most likely to have him eating in the morning? He judged this answer as closely as the movement of a deer before his bow, and then he waited a ten count to make certain there was no further insult from the man.
“No.”
“Huh,” he said. It was a thoughtful sound, then he made a hand motion like counting one, two, three, pointing at Piju.
“Then, boy. Why are you coming to me?”
Piju was being insulted, but he expected a battle from this man. He has also been warned. He was Fomor, rude and canny.
Since he hadn’t been marked tonight, he was technically a boy, but the real point was that Waylaid was provoking him.
Does he want a response, or does he want me to take it?
That was a hard question. If it had been the Kerrick, he would assume he shouldn’t move a muscle no matter what the provocation. If it was the Abernehh, he should insult him in return; they were famous for their insults. He born to one and raised the other. He was neither now.
“I need to work; you need a helper.”
Probably not the best response, as Lynneth was certainly a better helper on anything spiritual or herbal. She was the one who had bound the giant’s leg to a wooden splint to help the knee heal. Now the knee worked, though it stayed part way bent, even when he walked.
“Nice deflection, boy, but not an answer,” Waylaid said.
Waylaid stared at him, and Piju found himself focusing on that blind white eye. Fomor were renowned for their bad humor and their evil tempers. He didn’t expect that Waylaid was nicer than the average giant just from being beaten near to death. He had been a priest, perhaps he was loyal to the evil Fomor Gods, but there wasn’t a rumor of what his name had been, or why someone had struck him and thrown him into the sea.
Still that giant sat across the fire from Piju, like a great black wall, seemingly unconcerned with any answer the boy might give him.
“I’ll not be a fisherman,” said Piju.
“Ahh, fisherman’s boy. That is how they mean Piju, huh?”
It was loud, and Piju suppressed a flinch. Instead, he nodded, accepting the insult of his childhood name. He hadn’t been made an adult, so he didn’t have much of a choice.
The Kerrick had raised him after his parents died, but the masters of the Kerrick thought a fisherman’s boy should stick to his born trade and not run from the water. Their sons were good hunters as well, nearly as good as Piju, but they didn’t try to be fishermen. The people of Leest though that each family should stick to what they were good at and not steal the skills of their neighbors.
“Apprentice somewhere else,” Kerrick had said, “someone who’ll take you back to the sea or out of this town
.”
“So, boy,” the giant asked. “Do you want to learn to be a spirit warrior?”
A simple question, but he could read it like a game sign at a forest spring. If he went left, then the game would go right. No splitting the difference, no hedging.
“No,” Piju answered.
“You know,” Walaid said, straightening his posture and moving his left arm to lay across his leg. “The Elders have been after me to take an apprentice; so were the Masters of Kerrick and Abernehh. I think they want me to give you a try, boy.”
Waylaid lifted his hand to touch the furrow in the side of his face.
“They really want my secrets, someone to learn to see spirits and speak with the dead. Some proper Bolg of course. What do you think of that, huh?”
Piju didn’t have an answer for him. He had no more interest in seeing the spirits than Waylaid had in teaching him. It was quiet for a while. Waylaid looked at his hands as though they held the solution to this puzzle.
“What am I supposed to do for an apprentice?” Waylaid again pointed to his eye, white with scar tissue.
“I see spirits, gods, the past, and the truth. I don’t know how I see, I just do.”
He bowed to the fire and gripped his hideous head with his powerful hands, hands which could easily rend a Bolg boy limb from limb.
“The Good Father gave this to me. He took away my family, my people, my home, but he gave me truth.”
Piju thought then that Waylaid prayed to the spirit of his father, much as Piju asked the spirit of his own father for guidance, but he did not. Piju learned much later that the giant prayed to a god unknown to the Fomor. Waylaid’s hope lay in a foreign god, the Daen god of life, love, and forgiveness, The Good Father.
Waylaid laughed, softly and cynically, letting his arms fall back into his lap.
“Your elders want this truth for themselves. They want me to teach an apprentice to see the dead. How shall I teach him? Shall I hit him in the head with an axe?”
The quiet was only for a moment but it held a sickening import to Piju. He had wrapped the cloak around him for a trace of warmth, but now that fled. He shivered deep in his core.
“Should I try to kill you? Huh!” Again, Waylaid’s question was like the bark of a dog, more an answer than a question.
Piju was afraid for a moment but kept himself perfectly still. He allowed no expression on his face or change in his breathing. Waylaid’s voice was frightening, loud and angry. But Piju listened again with his hunter’s ears, hearing the desperate shout of an animal brought to bay. Waylaid was clearly in as hopeless a position as Piju was himself. He wasn’t taking Lynneth as a journeyman. She would want his gifts; she would push him to teach her what he could not teach.
Piju waited, twisting his feet and hands to warm them. The fire seeping slowly through the front of the cloak, warming him against the cold of the new year coming. Patience was his greatest skill and now he knew the path of his game. He needed to lead this path, not follow the wary game. Lay bait, not stalk after acceptance.
Waylaid didn’t seem inclined to talk further, so after a while Piju nodded, as if uncertain if he should speak.
“I can hunt,” Piju said.
Waylaid looked at him, expecting some trick. “I am not a hunting master. I know herbs and toxic grasses, laying spirits to rest, not shooting deer.”
“I don’t need to be taught to hunt, any more than I want to be taught to see the dead.” said Piju, raising his left arm from the cloak. “I can hunt just fine. I need a place. I need food, shelter, and a place in this village.”
Waylaid paused a moment, absorbing this. “I’ll not be in this village forever. When I get my strength back up, I’m travelling. There is no way to measure distance in this wilderness, but I’ll travel more days than not, over all of Pywer.”
The words of the Kerrick touched Piju again, and he knew that was what they had meant, “You need someone to take you out of this village.”
What would I be leaving behind? It isn’t hard to see. I would lose Harran, and some other good friends, my teachers in the Abernehh and the Kerrick, the man who has been like a father to me. Piju knew that it would be hard to leave but in many ways harder to stay.
Waylaid looked at him, measured him with his clear eye.
“Can you keep us in meat? I can get us bread with my work.”
Piju made the traditional Bolg gesture, a raised shoulder and cocked head. The Bolg shrug means both yes and no―middle of the path.
“I don’t cook well, but I can cold smoke anything, and make sure there is plenty of it.”
Waylaid shifted again, lifting his left arm with his right so that his left hand could hold a braid while he cut with the right. He returned to sawing at the roots with the sharp edge of the stone knife.
“Good,” he said, “apparently I need an apprentice.”
“Thank you, master.”
There was a pause while Waylaid freed the braid, his left arm falling heavily back into his lap. He then continued, changing subject without warning.
“You know, Piju,” his master said. “I know your adult name, and I know that you do not.”
Waylaid pointed with his knife over Piju’s shoulder.
“Your father stands by you shouting at me, like I was deaf.” Waylaid gave the matter some consideration. “I’ll not tell you your name, at least not yet, but I will set him to his rest.”
“Thank you, master.”
That was four and a half years ago, and a lifetime of travel.
CHAPTER 4 WAYLAID AT THE LIBRARY
Midsummer’s Day, Year Twenty-Seven of Cail’s Reign
A youth cannot find peace, but in the memories of childhood, there an old man finds contentment.
-Daen Proverb
It was warm and quiet on the upper floor of the Judge’s Library. The open shutters let a bit of the morning breeze into the attic and allowed the light to fall upon white curtains, which hung from the ceiling in six places, dividing the large upper floor into areas and rooms. The light spread widely from the curtains, a warm glow which illuminated around the many crisscross shelves with their heavy loads of scrolls. It was an even, warm light which made the room perfect for reading.
The giant crouched there, black sheepskin vest hardly different from his dark furred skin. No civilized robe, but a simple kilt. Marked as a barbarian Bolg with a tattoo on his shoulder and a turtle shell strapped to his chest. Yet his face looked oddly noble as it stared into a scroll, perhaps from one side you could see the beautiful young man he once had been. Deep lines grooved his face from years of hardship and travel, his skin bronzed near-black by the sun and his face maimed by the blow of an axe.
Hunched over Mistress Brea’s scroll table, Waylaid had found serenity. Though it was nearly lunch, the giant had not eaten today. Nor would he ever notice his hunger, without his apprentice to bother him. During five solitary years as a hermit in the secret mountains of the Fomor, he had trained himself to ignore the simple aggravations of daily life, such as eating. In time, perhaps when it was dark, he would eat and sleep. But while the sun was shining, his mind drifted in the words of ancient prophets.
The absence of the boy was a blessing. On a hunt, Piju could remain perfectly still for hours, but in a house, he was ceaselessly moving, making true peace and concentration nearly impossible. The boy read out loud, in Bolg, even if it was a Fomor manuscript. Infuriating. As an academic, Waylaid reveled in the quiet of an empty house and the hours he could devote to reading silently.
Many years ago, when he had been a young priest among the Fomor, Waylaid had spent his days in this same way. His childhood had been spent in libraries and classrooms. Among the manuscripts, he could once again be young of mind and whole of body. Many hard years had not changed his basic nature, for all it had changed his outward appearance. Gone were the golden linen robes trimmed in purple suede, as far from him as the endless marble halls. If he could float back through time, he would walk through
the libraries of ancients as his ancestors had. His grandfather had walked the shores of Gazzeh and taken a ship from Eubia to Atlantis, to see the ancient libraries there and to take from them some of their finest scrolls. The fortress libraries of the Fomor Islands were among the wonders of the world, and certainly among Waylaid’s happiest memories.
Still, there were nearly a thousand scrolls in Mistress Brea’s collection, and in the last year, Waylaid had been privileged to read barely a hundred. His research into the basic natures of the gods had led him to wander through the greatest minds of the last thousand years. One reference that kept coming up was “the Prophets of the Migration,” whom he now hunted with scholarly intensity.
“The First Prophets of the Blessed Folk” was a lovely scroll, nearly a dozen paces of well-copied lines rolled on a rod of cedar. The original was dust long ago, but it had been recopied only a hundred years ago in the south, across the sea in Murias. If this was an example of the land of Murias, he would have to brave the Sea of Storms and visit there someday. Murias was called the grain field of the four holy cities of the Blessed Folk, but any land which held wonders such as these scrolls must be truly blessed in learning as well.
The ends of the scroll clipped into Mistress Brea’s scroll stand, of which Waylaid made good use when she was not around, and behind it was the long pillowed bench of the judge’s Gorian chair. The Gorian chair might have been fine to recline in, for a lesser creature, but for a giant it was a fine cushion for sitting. Lying down he would have been a comical sight, with his knees off of one end and his head lolling from the other. The Blessed Folk were head and shoulders above the size of the Ruad or Bolg, but their furniture still felt like little more than children’s toys to a Fomor.
Those ignorant of the language of the Blessed Folk thought the word Blessed sounded like “Day” so they were commonly called the Day’en people or Daen. Or their priests, like his good host Mistress Brea, called her people the children of the Blessed Mother, Danann, but there were a dozen languages present in just this room and, in Waylaid’s opinion, using made-up names just confused everyone.
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