The Heirs of History: A Nation From Nothing

by T. Josiah Haynes

Hunter Fenhall pushed off the soldier holding him back. He had a pinched face, skinny frame, and his unkempt black hair reached for his dark green eyes. “Why are we building a temple? You’re a congresser. Why are you allowing this flagrant glorification of profane witchcraft?”

  Old Miner Hrabhill roared like a lion, “Take him! He blasphemes Hrash and his high cleric. Fenhall attacked young Sharanhall! He is a danger to our community.”

  “If Hrash exists, he is a demon — out to destroy us!”

  “I pray He strikes you down where you stand!”

  Rudrud strummed a rancid chord and sang:

  The king of the sky, the king of the sea

  The king of the land is coming for me

  He washed up a whale on the stoniest shore

  The huge dying whale told me, “One, two, three, four!”

  The atheistic hunter Fenhall was seven years Falhill’s elder. “I thought we sailed north to escape religious persecution.”

  “We sailed north,” the devout miner Hrabhill retorted, “to escape the Unholy King’s wickedness.”

  “It was not Yaangd who murdered my eldest son,” Fenhall yelled. “It was a cleric, a Brave Priest.”

  “A False Priest,” Hrabhill boomed. “Yaangd’s False Priests studied the archaic magics, sacrilegious and evil. That is not Hrashianity.”

  “Your religion killed my boy!”

  “Perhaps it was your lack of faith—”

  Falhill had to interject. “We must stop this madness.” Falhill helped Sharanhall from the ground. “Attacking a fellow citizen is grounds for imprisonment, Fenhall. One more offense, and Shelraadifhall there will lock you up in your own hovel. And you, Hrabhill. Do not bring a man’s son into the matter. Was it not your own son who perished against the False Priests?”

  Hrabhill scowled. “My son died on the docks of Enesma, when you raised the gangplank. Murderer.”

  The man in the clouds, the man in the moon

  The man in the mirror is coming at noon

  He struck down a flock of doves with a decree

  The doves sang in unison, “One, two, and three!”

  Falhill stared at the old miner who had just named him Murderer. Struck dumb, Falhill attempted to maintain his composure.

  Traamis the True stepped forward. “I have lost three sons, all to illness.” Traamis stepped closer to Fenhall. “We have all experienced loss. We lose loved ones to chance, but King Yaangd took just as many.” Traamis walked up to Fenhall and put a hand on his shoulder. “It is the Unholy King who holds responsibility. No matter if you believe in a higher power. We who occupy this virgin shore must not bicker.”

  Fenhall calmly removed Traamis’s hand from his shoulder. “Maybe you’re a good man, Traamis. But who’s to say your successor won’t sink into insanity, like our good king?”

  “Our old king,” Falhill added. “Now we govern ourselves. And no one will ask you to give tithes to the temple if you do not wish it.”

  Fenhall frowned. “I have four sons and a daughter. If any of you clerics ever tries to convert them, I’ll take the house arrest.” He stormed off. Falhill gave Soldier Shelraadifhall a nod, and the soldier followed Fenhall.

  Hrabhill scoffed. “Not only a murderer, but a coward as well!”

  Falhill turned sharply. “I did not kill your son.”

  “Fenhall threatened every cleric and grazer. In front of dozens! And you will do nothing?”

  “He will not strike,” Falhill was convinced. “Hunter Fenhall is a hothead, but he has children to take care of. To take matters into his own hands would mean abandoning his own to starve.” Falhill knew that wasn’t true. The congress would feed the widow and the orphan. There would be no homelessness or hunger in the colony for at least a generation.

  Hrabhill the elder grunted, but Traamis led him to the entrance of the temple, which faced the shore.

  Falhill addressed the small crowd who had gathered, “Back to work, everybody. Including me. We all have our projects. We are building this colony from scratch. On our own terms. Where men might have quarreled on the old coast, let us fill this new coast with healthy debate and reasonable discourse.” The crowd began to disperse. “Thank you, everybody.”

  Only then did Falhill spot his own wife in the crowd. Her expression was one he knew very well. Disappointment.

  The herald of hornets, the queen of the crows

  The duke of the druids has come to expose

  He brings down the thunder and chops down a yew

  The thick, gnarled tree says to me, “One and two!”

  Sharanhall thanked Falhill and left as his wife Falhadn walked up. “If you allow men to spew insults at you, you are no more powerful than a child.”

  “Good afternoon to you as well.”

  “I’m serious, Falhill.” His wife looked around at the dissolving crowd and the rising tide and the half-constructed temple. “Fenhall and Hrabhill and everyone who witnessed your pitiable speech will no longer respect you. You’re throwing away your status as a congresser.”

  “Maybe you think you know more than you do about governance. It’s not all closed fist tyranny. You’ve got to have an open palm sometimes.”

  “That is the sort of weakness that will get us both killed.”

  “Stop exaggerating. You’re upsetting me.”

  Falhadn shook her head. “If the Drysword dies of this illness he’s come down with, Traamis the Truly Annoying is the people’s choice to lead. You should have shown yourself stronger than Traamis. Then he won’t be able to walk over you when the people make him a congresser.”

  “The people can’t make him a congresser. For now, the congress will elect its own members.”

  “Seven of you?” Falhadn laughed. “There’s fifteen hundred of us. If even one tenth of the commonfolk don’t approve of one of your decisions, the next thing these people build will be a guillotine.”

  “We will talk about this more at home. For now, I need to return to my responsibilities.”

  His wife shook her head once more. “If only my parents were martyred rebel leaders, perhaps I could have been a good congresser.” Her final barb inserted into Falhill’s thin skin, Falhadn sauntered away.

  The son of the mountain, the son of the fire

  The son of the sandy shores comes with a lyre

  He strums, and the lion falls down with the sun

  The dead lion roars in my ear, “One! One! One!”

  Falhill stopped Rudrud from continuing on his rusty lyre and sent him off. Murderer, Hrabhill had called him. Coward. Falhill knew it was Drea and Dreahall who severed the gangplank and stranded Hrabhill’s son and hundreds of others. But if they hadn’t, everyone on Beautiful Yaangdhadn would have perished anyway.

  His mind raced. He couldn’t focus. The thought of his surrogate father Drea dying pumped his blood faster and faster. Falhill had to visit the sickly old man.

  Beautiful Yaangdhadn bobbed atop the shallow waves. Falhill scurried to the docks, alone. At the foot of the replacement gangplank, Falhill ran into young Dreahall. Drea’s only grandson seemed upset to run into Falhill.

  “Good afternoon, Dreahall.”

  “Oh. Good evening, Falhill. Nearly evening, at least.” Dreahall’s eyes darted back and forth.

  “Is your grandfather alright?”

  “Yes. He’s still breathing. He even said a few words earlier today.”

  Falhill’s ears perked. “Oh? What did he say?”

  But Dreahall blinked and gulped. “He asked what day it was. I mean, gibberish. It was nonsense, but he was able to drink some fresh water.”

  “Do you think I could sit with him? Pray by his side?”

  “Go ahead. Shelwyn stands guard right now. I’ve got to… I have to run into town.”

  “Do you need help with anything?”

  Dreahall squinted. “I just need to get some mushy food he can swallow easily. Keep his strength up.”

  “You probably want to go to Glaadhedeen’s then.”


  Dreahall tried to leave, but he stopped. “Sorry?”

  “Glaadhedeen? She is a superb herbalist. She would know what Drea needs to eat to keep his strength—”

  But Dreahall interrupted, “I think I can handle it.” And he rushed off.

  Falhill knew Dreahall was not the natural statesman his grandfather was, but seldom had Dreahall acted so nervously. Worried his grandfather is headed for Hrash. True, Dreahall had another grandfather who had made the watery voyage north. But it was Drea Drysword who had raised the orphaned Dreahall.

  Falhill walked up the gangway and delved into the belly of the fat pleasure barge.

  Shelwyn guarded the door to Drea’s quarters, which gladdened Falhill. The fifty-year-old soldier stood a head taller than Falhill, even though he habitually stooped. Stubble lined his asymmetric jaw, and hazel eyes sunk deep into his face.

  “I’d like to pray with him,” Falhill requested.

  “Of course, Falhill,” he replied. Shelwyn opened the door, and Falhill entered.

  Shelwyn closed the door without a noise. Falhill sat beside old man Drea, who breathed slowly, curled beneath myriad furs.

  “If you can hear me, Drea, know that I will do everything in my power to bring your vision to life. A colony built from nothing. And when Dreahall is your age, we will be the greatest civilization this world has ever seen.”

  Drea began to snore.

  “Hrash above, I bring forth a plea of healing. Cure your servant of this ill. Breathe fresh air into his lungs and pump clean blood into his veins. Imbue in him a new vigor. And… And…” Falhill sighed and let his head hang. “I don’t know how to lead. I am not a man who inspires much love, or much fear. I am not my father, nor my mother. I am not my wife, nor her father. I am not Drea, nor am I Kraek. Thank Hrash I’m no Yaangd. There are so many kinds of leaders who the people look up to, and others who have failed — in my estimation. Hrash, help me to know who I am as a leader.” He yawned. “Help me make my father proud. And my mother. And Drea, too.”

  Commotion outside the door stirred Falhill from his velvet slumber. He had fallen into a dreamless sleep. He rose to check on Shelwyn. But when he opened the door, there was no guard.

  The sun had retreated beneath the horizon, Falhill could tell through the grated door which led above deck. He closed Drea’s door and crept towards the stairs.

  But before he could reach the egress, his wedbrother Primhill lifted the grated door. “Falhill, come with me. Quickly.”

  “What is it?”

  “Falhill, you’re in danger.”

  “Danger?” Had the Unholy King found them? The False Priests? Some vicious neighbor, whose sacred ground the colonists had desecrated? “What do you mean?”

  “I need to make sure they don’t kill you or the Drysword. Laebm is on his way to protect Drea.”

  “Who is trying to kill me and Drea? Who is ‘they’?”

  Primhill grabbed Falhill’s overshirt. “It’s the high cleric. Somebody tried to assassinate Traamis the True.”

  Chapter four

  Hullahedeen

  The shriek of a three-year-old woke Falhadn from her shallow slumber.

  To hear his father tell it, Primhall had wept every night since his mother sacrificed herself on the docks of Enesma.

  To her dismay, little teary-eyed Primhall now had to sleep in Falhadn’s hovel — since his father Primhill took the night watch over her husband, Congresser Falhill.

  It had only been a day and a few hours since Traamis the Truly Annoying’s attempted assassination. Falhadn hoped the high cleric perished, but her opinion sat squarely in the minority.

  Since her congresser husband seemed a potential target, a soldier protected him night and day. It was her husband’s position that meant their nephew wept loud enough to wake the neighbors. Much like everything was Falhill’s fault.

  Don’t be so harsh, she repeated in her head. Falhadn had to remind herself to be proud of Falhill for becoming a congresser with some modicum of power. Her husband had developed a bond with Drea Drysword, survived the Battle of Enesma… But she knew that Falhill only served as a congresser simply because he had the fortune of two martyred parents.

  Where Falhadn and her husband slept, an unlit lantern swung from the wooden slats in the ceiling. Rushes covered the floors, though once everyone in the colony had a roof to sleep under, the community would start on floor boarding every hovel. Their bed was a plump feather bed, taken from a cabin in Beautiful Yaangdhadn — though most beds on this new coast were filled with leaves and covered with old dingy furs or pelts. But most protestants weren’t wives of a congresser.

  Their bedroom grew colder every night. Falhill had taken to sleeping in all his clothes while Falhadn procured as many furs as she could muster. But the chill would not subside. Fires refused to survive in this squat gray structure Falhill called home.

  Falhill and Falhadn lay next to one another in their marriage bed, cold stone draped with half a dozen deer pelts. Both heads rested upon soft pillows — watching the ceiling, listening to Primhall’s nightmarish screeching. Their bedroom made up half of their hovel, the other half being the kitchen and privy, where Primhall slept on a pile of furs. Hers and Falhill’s hovel sat a hundred meters from the shoreline. There were but three things in life that could ever make Falhadn smile. But her husband was not one of them.

  Falhadn had lived a life of misfortune. She never knew hunger, nor any physical abuse, nor had Falhadn suffered under any firsthand persecution at the hands of the Unholy King and his False Priests. However, Falhadn’s parents made her life miserable.

  When Falhadn had celebrated her thirteenth birthday, her parents filled their home with obese merchants and grizzled graybeards who were willing to pay fresh mint gold and arable land for a little girl’s maidenhood. Falhadn suffered countless kisses and listened to bawdy japes for a night and a morning before her father sent the suitors back to their respective mansions to touch themselves at the thought of a pretty little girl in their beds.

  “You will learn to love your husband,” her father had told her. “Your mother and I didn’t love each other until the day we joined our houses.” Joined our house, Falhadn thought with a wry smile. Falhadn’s parents were second cousins.

  “Hullahedeen,” her mother had cautioned, “you will never take a man’s name if you don’t play their games. Will you always call yourself Hullahedeen? Even when you’re as old as I am? You would end up a reviled old hag. And who would inherit everything your father has built?”

  Falhadn hated to recall her maiden name, Hullahedeen. Her father’s name was Hulla, her mother’s Balhulla; their grandfathers had been brothers. Falhadn guessed her father had married a cousin only because the wealthy nobility of Hrashmaad would intermarry, resulting in generations of incest and sickly offspring. And Hulla wished more than anything to be considered nobility.

  When Falhadn had told her parents she intended to marry a scribe — and son to a farmer and a seamstress — Hulla slapped his daughter across the face, and Balhulla vomited daintily onto her immaculate wooded floor. “You are forbidden to leave this house!” her father declared. But Falhadn could not help but allow a genuine smile to cross her lips.

  They had had a single household guardsman, all her father could afford from his personal coffers. Guardsman Jeulfynhall read scrolls with Falhadn when she stood no taller than his hip and taught her how to write in different dialects.

  Upon the news of her undesirable betrothed, Governor Hulla commanded Jeulfynhall to detain his little Hullahedeen. When Jeulfynhall hesitated and allowed her to escape, Hulla banished the guardsman from the city.

  Falhadn forced Hulla to bring the man back into his employ — one of many conditions Hulla had to meet to attend her wedding ceremony.

  At the ceremony, her father added two stone to his gut and chin, Guardsman Jeulfynhall was developing a goiter on his neck, and her mother could not find enough crushed seashell to cover the bruises ov
er her eye. Thinking back, Falhadn realized her wedding day four solar cycles past was the last time she ever saw her parents.

  “Falhadn?” a voice whispered. It had to be Falhill’s voice, though she wished another lay beside her. “Falhadn, are you awake?”

  Falhadn breathed in, then out. “Why?”

  “I know how much this arrangement has inconvenienced you — the both of us. I wanted to tell you how much I love you.”

  Falhadn turned to look at her bedmate, her partner, her husband. Falhill’s face narrowed at the chin, and his long black hair matted into moist clumps. But on his unattractive face sat a sheepish grin. Falhadn hated everything about this man, though, she had to admit, days had gone by when she hated him more.

  “You are my husband. I would hope that you loved me.”

  “And you are my wife. I hope you love me.”

  Falhadn could not answer, could not express what bubbled in her soul. A yearning, a hot desire for something else. Something beyond. She was not cruel, not so cruel as to drive a man to tears. But Falhadn’s feelings of imprisonment and disgust would not wane.

  She simply turned her head to face the wood-slat ceiling, covered in dense thatch.

  “I must dress and meet with Kraek and the rest of them, to discuss Drea’s sickness and the attempt on Traamis. Denhall will be absent, but we won’t sit at the Marble Slab until Drea is healthy again, if I have anything to say about it. It’s all informal—” Falhill yawned. Both of them hadn’t gotten much sleep.

  The night before, their nephew Primhall ran off. They found him in the Northwood, near an odd two-story structure, ringed in fading blue runes. The sun had set, so they left the forest before investigating the two-story structure. If I had seen my mother die when I was only three, I might be a much happier person.

  Falhadn scratched her bare shoulder. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “I thought I could prepare dinner this evening, for us and Primhill and the little one. I’ll go fishing after the meeting.”