To be sure, not everyone could be as educated as a Fomor or a priest of the Blessed Folk. Waylaid spoke several languages fluently, all those used in Pywer certainly, and could read and write in most of his full dozen. It was a standard requirement for Mastery as a priest of Fomor. Very little sorcery was written into a common language, it just wasn’t sensible.
The stories from Murias had likely been translated from an early Fomor root language onto the original scroll, and so the stories they presented were at least a hundred years older than that transcription, pointing to near the end of the reign of the Island Kings. Waylaid would have preferred to read directly the scratches of those ancient peoples, the rhyme and meter had suffered horribly through the translations, but this prophet’s love for the Good Father and Blessed Mother came through in the end. The prophet Amphious knew that through their love and strength they would conquer the Dragon and his dark angels. When the world was safe, their son would be born and he would rule over angels and men in peace forever.
The Father and Mother were unknown to the Fomor, but the Dragon and those that served him were well known. Perhaps those dark angels were among the gods he had worshiped in his previous life.
These early prophets didn’t yet feel the stresses which had pulled the church apart in later years. The works of the Father and Mother were not that different, but competed for the hearts and minds of their folk, instead of cooperating. Clearly it was the work of the first created being, the Dragon, but also the work of ignorant men and women. All should have learned from the mistakes of the ancient ones, Waylaid’s own ancestors, who had used the darkest of sorcery to enslave the gods. Anyone who is forced to serve will hate his owners; this is true of men, angels, and gods. Thus the Bolg hate the Ruad, the Dragon hates the Mother, and the gods hate the Fomor.
The sound of raised voices slowly penetrated the engrossing speech of the Prophet Amphious. “Amphious’s Progression” had been written during the Blessed Folk’s great migration to Muria. It echoed many of Waylaid’s early thoughts about the Good Father, and he had hopes that he had finally located the original verse. A shout piqued against his concentration, and a door opened downstairs. Waylaid raised his head but found nothing out of place about the Library. The yelling appeared to come from outside. He found himself raising his right hand into the attitude of question, fingers curled and palm upraised, but there was no one here to answer it.
He was tempted to return to his study, but thought he may as well stretch his back. The scroll table could be lifted to be read while standing, at least for someone a good bit shorter than a Fomor, but Waylaid still found himself crouching over the words when he wasn’t careful, as if he were a hunter seeking the elusive prey of meaning.
The Blessed Folk had fixed his shoulder last fall, for which he was grateful. When they pulled it back into place it had hurt worse than when he had dislocated it falling off the cliff. The years he had lived among the Bolg, they couldn’t even shift the joint and he had kept his arm in a sling. During the years that he and Piju had traveled, the pain had been an ordeal as great as any he had endured. His left arm still wasn’t quite up to its original self, but it was far better than before. He could stand near straight these days, if he stretched his knee out and ignored the pain in his non-existent foot.
The damnedest part was that he couldn’t just feel the foot, but he saw it as well. His left eye was a white and scarred mass, which shouldn’t be able to see anything. Still, oddly, it seemed to work as well as the right eye. Better in some ways, for it often saw things which others could not. With a squint and a head tilt he could be sure that half the foot was still gone, but his left eye still saw the foot, his mind still felt the foot. The foot should damn well be there.
Someone yelled outside, in the lovely yet aggravating Ruad tongue. The intonation and speech of Ruad was different enough from the Bolg language to fool the mind, but the words were actually much the same. For the first minute of hearing it, the words would wash over Waylaid like a birdsong in a forest, beautiful and relaxing. Unfortunately meaning would come crashing in soon thereafter. Frankly, given the nonsense the Ruad were likely to be speaking, birdsong was much preferred.
Cracking and popping like an old man, Waylaid put on his wooden half-shoe and sandal. Clomping like half a pony, he made his way between the hanging sheets to the trapdoor entrance to the Library. Lowering himself to the floor, a long trip for a man of his size, he slowly made his way down the ladder, going gently on both his missing left foot and his twice-broken right knee. It was dark on the ground floor, with only flickering firelight showing from the kitchen and a bit of curtain-filtered daylight seeping through the shutters.
Why are they keeping the shutters closed during the day?
The heat in the lower room was stifling. The kitchen was on the right, and just looking in made his belly grumble. He silenced it with a thought. He looked into the privacy room on the left, but it was empty as well. Compared to Fomor dwellings, the building was tiny. As more than a dozen people lived here, a private room for basic functions was often necessary. At least it was cleaned daily and didn’t stink like he would have imagined before coming here.
Limping slowly past the kitchen into the expansive greatroom, he avoided tripping over someone’s open bedroll and made his way to the window. He was a bit aggravated, as his bedroll, and nine others, were stacked properly on the left-hand wall. The couch had been pushed up against the shutters, keeping them locked, but he carefully pushed aside the curtain, and looked cautiously out between the shutters.
It was bright and sunny outside, perhaps a bit more dusty than beautiful. The city of Ard was pretty in its own way, and the central palaces were more than slightly reminiscent of the glorious Fomor fortress which had once stood there. The front of the Library opened directly onto one of the big roads, Eastern Way, a street even a Fomor could walk down swinging his arms. In the space of a few buildings, Eastern Way opened onto East Gate Road. As there were only three ways into or out of Ard, the roads to those gates had to carry a lot of business.
Most of the streets in Ard were too small to be called hallways for a Fomor. Going to the bakery, once, he had pushed over the stacked stone wall of a house. The alley had been so tight that his shoulders had been trapped when he tried to get around a corner. Eastern Way was smaller than East Gate road, but there was easily room for several dozen people on the street in front of Brea’s Library; it was crowded.
The people were not walking to or from anywhere―they were gathered. A crowd had formed outside, an angry crowd. All looked to be men of the Ruad race, not a man much taller than his belt and not a brown hair amongst them. Not a lot of red either, and a look at their clothes placed them as farmers. Two of the men in the back were wearing good linen shirts, but most of them dressed in rough brown wool felt or homespun. Their tunics were for field work, sleeves which ended at the elbow and a hem above the knee, for working on your knees. The leggings were tied linen strips running from the simple shoes up to their well-worn knees. Given the dirt on them, they had been working today. That made them bean farmers, for the wheat didn’t need much attention at midsummer.
What could the Library have to do with a bunch of Ruad farmers?
Mistress Brea’s young men were watching them, but they were already outnumbered more than three to one. He thought that this would be poor to handle with violence.
Though, to be honest, the Blessed Folk are the best at violence there is. A Fomor, like myself, might kill a dozen of the Ruad. It wouldn’t be that hard, as a Ruad hardly comes to my waist, and doesn’t weigh as much as one of my legs.
But in time, the weight of numbers would wear him out. The anger of the Fomor was famous but as a cold thing. The Fomor killed mechanically, without mercy or care, executioners not warriors. The wrath of the Blessed Folk was something else altogether, frightening even to a Fomor giant. If one of the young priests outside gave in to his berserker rage, he wouldn’t feel any blows given by
a man as small as a Ruad. He would fight until every enemy was dead, or he was himself.
The Blessed Folk are far more respectable, physically, than the Ruad or Bolg. Still, they weigh less than half what a Fomor does, and are head and shoulders shorter than even a bent and broken man like Waylaid, but they are killers. The fighting team of the Blessed Folk did not show off their individual prowess, however great it might be, but worked together to keep one man alive. The berserker, the one with the Mother’s Blessing, was the heart of their formations. The team kept him alive and gave him the freedom to fight as the Blessing demanded. That man would slay their enemies by the hundreds.
The Line Leader, Seth the Younger, slid back through the front door, closing but not barring it. He left the other five men of his line outside.
“They’ll keep for a while,” he said.
“What is happening?” Waylaid asked, his voice a low rumble.
He turned away from the window, his eye straining to recover its dark vision in this closely shuttered room.
Seth laughed, somewhat nervously.
“You know, and this is a bit embarrassing,” he said. “Before I met you, I knew all the rumors and wouldn’t have hesitated to repeat an evil story about a Fomor. Now that I know you, it is hard to say this to you.”
Waylaid gave him a stern look and lifted his hands palm up with a twist of his wrist that meant, give.
“All right,” said Seth, laughing uncomfortably. “In the stories, children’s stories, they say that Fomor steal naughty children and sacrifice them to their gods.”
Waylaid only looked confused, but Seth was red with embarrassment.
“You know,” Seth said. “Surely Fomor have old wives’ tales, the stories mothers, old ladies and such tell to children.”
His voice changed to be like an old woman, “You behave yourself, or the Fomor Giants will come in your window and eat you up!” Seth coughed, and laughed at himself.
“I know it’s silly, you couldn’t even fit in a window, but I was taught the same as them, as those folk, when I was small.”
Waylaid nodded at this.
“It isn’t precisely true,” Waylaid said, “but I’ll not dispute the legend with you.
“Fomor care for the spirits of their dead through ritual sacrifice. We usually sacrifice hens and pigs. It is a simple magic, no different than your sacrifice before a service to the Blessed Mother.” He nodded at Seth in a scholarly fashion and spoke the rote learning. “Dying feeds the dead.”
“Sorcery, unlike simple magic, binds the spirits. Spilling blood for a spirit might kill you, unless you bind them carefully to your will. And, more sacrifice is necessary than for simple magic to encourage the spirit to accept the binding. Sometimes, for more special occasions, we use human sacrifice. In particular,” and Waylaid looked pained at this point, “for powerful sorcery, child sacrifice isn’t unknown.”
Waylaid stared at the dark wall at the back of the room, lost in his memories. He finally continued to speak.
“Simply said, we… THEY… prefer not to use their own children. We have few enough. You understand?”
Waylaid looked past Seth to Seth’s shadow. In the darkness, it seemed more solid than the man standing in front of him. He watched the shadow draw its sword and in that moment, Waylaid prepared for death. As his eye adjusted to the gloom, the image faded, and Seth had not moved.
For a long time it was quiet in the room, the murmur of the crowd no more than a breeze in a forest. Seth had turned pale, and his eyes were wide. His mouth was too dry to swallow, and his throat had closed.
Seth shivered. “I…” He tried to laugh again but he couldn’t move his tongue. In truth he was profoundly shaken; a childhood fable stood in front of him: a Fomor giant who came through windows to take the naughty children away. Throughout the months of knowing this creature, this man, Seth had learned that Waylaid was…at least mostly…like any member of the Blessed people.
Was he bigger? Certainly. Waylaid was twice as wide at the shoulder as Seth, and he’d have to stretch to touch the top of his head. Was he frightening in appearance? Yes, his mismatched eyes and bent forehead was the image of evil, but Waylaid was more mild-mannered than any of the priest-warriors of Seth’s line. The legends of Fomor heartlessness and dark nature were simple children’s tales, to be disregarded with the new evidence.
And then apparently, cruelly returned, crumbling his beliefs once again. Seth reminded himself sternly that he served the Judge, not this monster and certainly not himself. He was a priest of the Blessed Mother and would not be shaken by the presence of evil.
He composed himself and looked again at the hideous giant.
“Those people out there, their children, members of their families, were killed,” he said.
Waylaid stared impassively. “And?”
“And, they believe that a sorcerer has killed them.”
Waylaid nodded, calmly.
“If they were killed by sorcery, then that would be reasonable. I can think of—”
Seth continued, talking over him, pointedly. “They believe an evil—and particularly frightening looking—Fomor sorcerer has cast a spell over their children, luring them into the woods and killing them.”
Waylaid nodded again, looked puzzled.
“Why would they think that? What spell could I…” he started then stopped, nodding again.
“Ahhhh,” he grumbled, lifting his left hand palm inward for reversal/irony.
“They do not look for me, the priest of the Good Father, to solve their problem. They are an industrious people, and they look to solve their problem directly, by killing me. Yes?”
Seth nodded, finding himself mimicking Waylaid’s oddly complex gesture. He lowered his arm and frowned at the Fomor.
“We have to get you out of here. The mistress told me to keep you safe, and I’ll not have you killed in her house, at least.”
“I could talk with them,” Waylaid said. “Perhaps they would reconsider hasty action, listen to their Ruad philosophers?”
“Do you not understand a mob? Don’t Fomor have mobs?” Seth raised his hand to point at Waylaid’s eye. “Seriously, they can’t be reasoned with.”
“No,” Waylaid replied, “the Fomor are not prone to hasty action, but the study of reason and intelligent discourse. This eye is not the work of a mob. I regret saying so, but this is the work of my brother. He is the highest ranked priest of Cern in Pywer and the only man on Pywer with the right to banish me from the priesthood. The sentence on my foot, according to my brother, was passed in court by my closest kin, who is ranked higher yet.”
Waylaid paused a moment, thinking of how best to describe the different societies. “You see, we―the Fomor that is―listen to our priest, our kings, our philosophers. The people would never gather without the blessings of a priest, or at least a minor sacrifice, it would simply invite the retribution of our gods. A retribution which the Fomor, to a man, deserves.
“Unfortunately,” the giant continued, “when the rulers of men feel that their position and their hereditary rights are threatened, their reactions may not be greatly unlike those of your mobs, despite having the intrinsic value of their wisdom.”
“You threatened the High Priest of the Fomor?” asked Seth.
“I did not say that,” corrected Waylaid. “I said that he felt threatened.”
“Hmm,” said Seth. “If it was one of mine, and someone had threatened the Mistress, well someone would have lost their temper. There would have been swords drawn and blood flowing.” Seth smiled a bit maliciously. “You know what I mean, a good argument.”
The giant was taken aback by that smile; sometimes the combative nature of the Blessed Folk was too alien for him to understand.
“Let us not have a good argument with a bunch of Ruad farmers,” he said. “Is it possible to avoid at this point?”
“Come on,” said Seth, and he led Waylaid back into the kitchen. The kitchen was well used, as it kept a
dozen men in bread and cheese, yogurt and sausages, along with whatever else could be found, but little food was stored in the preparation area. Seth lifted a small trap door, flipped it back, and dropped down out of sight. Waylaid sighed, and again went through the longish process where he lowered himself down. There was no ladder, and Waylaid found when he lowered himself, that the drop only took him to his waist.
He lowered himself to a sitting position, which barely got his head inside the storeroom. He reached over his head, found the trap door, and pulled it shut. Seth held a small oil lamp.
“Come on, there is more room over here.”
Waylaid crawled between the boxes, sliding gratefully down a set of steps which led under the body of the house. The room here was high enough for him to stand erect, and he walked among the jars and boxes left here for the cold. A well was drilled here. It was probably foul now that a city dwelt around them, but it had once fed the baths of a Fomor lord. The floor was tiled in ceramic sea-shells and blue glaze.
Seth swung the lantern back and forth.
“I figure they won’t know this is down here, and we can hide you for a while.”
“Why wouldn’t they search under the kitchen?”
Seth thought about it. “I guess they might, but I can’t think of anything better.” Seth moved away from Waylaid, leaving him in shadow.
“I’ll see if there’s a better spot for hiding around here; I haven’t really searched around for one. We weren’t expecting this.”
Waylaid looked to the left and right, hoping for a bench as his foot was already hurting him badly today. The light improved while he listened to Seth humming tunelessly; the notes echoing around the barren walls. The change was gradual, but suddenly Waylaid realized that he could see the floor as clear as day.
The Broken Man Page 9