by J. C. Hendee
He stood on the gradual eastern slope of the mountain’s main point ridge. Covered in boulders, small crags, and growths of kelp, everything was awash in rippling bands of light from the high sun above the water’s choppy surface. Fear faded in wonder as he peered about, and then he even began looking for any mark of an old anchor that had bitten in deep somewhere here.
It was a silly notion. Any such mark made by the anchors of Uinfeald’s vessel would have long ago worn away or been obscured with sea life, crust, and grit. And the ridge he stood upon was not the only one.
Other smaller ones spread out to all sides for as far as he could see, which was not as far as he could have upon the ship. Some might even be treacherous when approaching too close to shore, should a vessel’s pilot not know these waters well. Perhaps that was also why every generation of his family took this dive—fall—on their first day as a true sea-trader.
Few others would ever come to know these waters in this way and live to benefit from such a sight. But as Karras looked about, he had far less time than he hoped.
The thick rope pulled taut about his waist.
His feet rose from the ocean floor, and in what seemed less time than the descent, he surfaced, heaved a breath, and grabbed the rope as his father and several of the crew hauled him up to the deck. Standing there dripping and a bit chilled, he looked to the mountain and traced the primary ridge down to the water and what was now hidden from his eyes.
“Were you afraid down there?” Uinseil asked.
Karras turned to his father, who watched him with narrowed eyes and a slighter smile.
“Yes… but only at first,” he answered.
“Good! That is as it should be, for there are two lessons in this.”
Again, Karras was careful not to roll his eyes at another lecture.
“Though we, the Iamílchlagh, choose a life our people find mad, there is good reason for them to think so. At sea, we die more quickly than any race upon the waves. There will be no rescue should you fall overboard, no chance to reach you before you sink to your death. And that death will be certain, for even this close to our people’s mountain, there is little chance any of us could make the walk to shore. But through fear there is also a certainty you felt down there beneath your feet…
“Earth and stone are everywhere, even though we cannot always see them in this way of life we have chosen. They remain our origin, no matter that their judgment is harsher upon us while on the open ocean, where we supposedly do not belong. This is what Uinfeald understood and remembered… and so should you. Only by earth and stone did he stand fast in a moment of need.”
Even then, when a younger Karras had become a sea-trader under his proud father’s lecture, he had been rather doubtful that great-grandfather had made the best choice. It might have been better to let the brigands take the ship. So close to Calm Seatt, they would have stolen what they could carry—very little at that—and fled rather than linger until a patrol ship appeared.
And now… years later, as Karras stood wistfully looking down upon the ocean below Chemarré, he knew that life was lost to him. Tentatively safe from a traditionally arranged marriage in being apprenticed to Fiáh’our, lost as well was any hope of Skirra ever accepting him. He had lost everything he wanted.
Karras turned and looked upslope for that hateful temple in which he had been trapped day after day. Instead he spotted Fiáh’our.
The old warrior trod the next length of the street’s slant above, disappearing and reappearing between high protrusions atop buildings cut from the mountain’s stone or built up in perfectly chiseled and fitted blocks. As Fiáh’our neared the sharp turn that would bring him along the next length of the slanted street…
Karras panicked. The last thing he needed was to deal with the old man any more this day, but the clan réhanâkst was too far off.
He dashed to the street’s inner side and up some steep stairs between the buildings to a first landing. There he flattened against the wall near a heavy oak door with an overhead banner proclaiming it as an herbalist’s shop.
At least the place appeared closed for the day, with its one window shuttered and not a sound coming from inside. All he need do was wait for the braggart to pass and then make for the réhanâkst and a little food and rest… and privacy.
Soon enough, the old warrior tromped by, and Karras descended oh so quietly to peek around the stairwell’s bottom. Fiáh’our continued down the slanted street, only slowing to return a curt nod or gruff greeting when hailed by a passerby.
Karras turned his eyes on the clan réhanâkst. Short as its frontage was, and looking small from the outside, its inside cut deep into the mountain. Beyond the front room, far quieter than some noisy cheag’anâkst, “greeting house,” there were plenty of private little chambers, all cozy and quiet. He had had the same one to himself for the last moon.
In the evenings, gatherings in the front room were quiet, friendly, and filled for the most part with more respectable clan members. Even now, two chimneys atop the stone slab roof leaked trails of sleepy smoke quickly carried off by the breeze.
Karras waited anxiously as he watched Fiáh’our’s back.
“Hurry up, you old boar,” he whispered, and then, “go on, now, and… wait… no… no!”
Fiáh’our slowed, turned, headed up the two deep steps to the réhanâkst’s broad door… and went inside.
For an instant, Karras just stared.
He shared the same clan with that blusterer, but not once in the last moon had he seen Fiáh’our come to the réhanâkst, let alone have to listen to more overblown tellings of great exploits. Wherever Fiáh’our had been staying… well, who cared?
Karras let out an anguished moan—and it turned into the foulest string of Numanese cursing his frustrations could come up with. He kicked the stairwell wall three times, spun and slapped the building’s corner repeatedly, and kicked it as well. Maybe he did it all again in furious flailing before he pulled his hands hard down his face.
Someone nearby sharply cleared a throat. “Ahem.”
Karras peered with one eye through his spreading fingers.
Two stout rughìr in ringed leather armor stood out in the middle of the street, each bearing a thick iron staff more than head-high. The nearer one glared at him in clear disapproval, like any local clan constabulary would for a public fit. The other tilted her head, looking around the first at the corner of the stairwell.
Karras took a quick glance. Fortunately he had not chipped any public stonework in his tantrum.
“Sorry,” he grumbled.
Both constables went their way after a stern frown from the second.
Karras glared spitefully toward the réhanâkst and took off down the street.
He had already lost everything else that mattered, so he was not going to be made homeless away from home by the likes of Fiáh’our. But when he neared the building’s corner, he stalled.
There was one thing worse than losing his last refuge: being trapped in the common room if that old blusterer had yet to take a room.
Karras crept in beside the steps to the nearest high front window and, clinging to the sill, he arched up on his boot toes, trying to peek inside.
3. For Want of a Cask
Fiáh’our half-heartedly nodded or curtly waved to any who knew him in the réhanâkst. He passed between all those chatting and lounging on ornately engraved oak or stone stools near the hearths at the common room’s two ends. When he finally leaned on the long, tall counter at the right side of the room’s rear, he ignored the casks of fine wood ale lining the back wall all the way to the curtained archway at the far end. He was waiting for someone particular.
Finally, an elderly male rughìr with char-gray hair and a face as craggy as a weathered bluff came around the counter’s end with an empty tray.
This was not the one Fiáh’our had expected; it was, well, the other one. The old, craggy tender clapped the tray on the countertop, yanked his furred
sheepskin vest straight, and leaned across at Fiáh’our.
“All right, what is it this time?”
Fiáh’our straightened. “Wohlahk, what kind of greeting is that for a clan-kin?”
“Oh, spare me, you troublemaker. You are not here for a room or even a drink, at a guess. Or was it too much carousing in the underside and they threw you out of even that low place?”
Fiáh’our took a deep breath; the pomposity of some, even among his own clan, was astounding. Honor and good manners were worthy at any depth in the seatt, though at times one or the other was missing, all the more, the higher that one climbed.
“I am looking for something,” he said with strained patience, “but I am at a loss for where or how to find it.”
“Do I look like a walking marketplace?”
Fiáh’our tapped his thick fingers on the countertop. “Would you please let Jhoa’nen know I am here?”
Wohlahk leaned in like an old hawk eyeing some weasel attempting to climb up its roost.
“You listen up!” he warned. “You are not getting my wife involved in another of your little schemes. The last time cost too much, and we are still getting the eye for it. Do something like that again, and I will see you dangle from a street pylon by that thôrhk around your neck!”
Much as Fiáh’our’s ire rose, he was not blameless for Wohlahk’s accusation. “Information is all I need,” he assured. “Now, could you get Jhoa’nen… please?”
With a hiss through gritted teeth, Wohlahk turned away toward the curtained arch behind the counter, but not without a glare at Fiáh’our that could have curdled goat’s milk. Once he disappeared, it was not long before an equally gray and weathered female rughìr stepped out in a matching sheep’s fur vest, though hers was longer with the pockets set low.
At the sight of Fiáh’our, Jhoa’nen’s mouth opened a little below widened eyes. She leaned back and peeked around the curtain’s edge, likely to see if her husband lingered in the kitchen beyond.
Jhoa’nen hurried over and whispered, “What are you doing here?”
Fiáh’our eyed the archway curtain. He hooked a finger at her and tilted his head toward the common room’s far corner. With a worried frown, Jhoa’nen rounded the counter and followed him over near the front window, as far from that curtained archway as they could get.
“Do not tell me you have another barter of a lifetime,” she whispered. “I am still living down the last one.”
“Oh shush!” Fiáh’our chided. “Tell me that was not the finest cask of ebony liquor you ever had?”
“You had the most it,” she muttered. “But yes, it was… until you passed out and toppled like an oak. I could not drag your bulk or the cask out of sight before my husband caught us both beyond pickled. Of course, that part you do not remember!”
“Um, no,” Fiáh’our replied with a sheepish shrug. “Only waking up in the street under the glare of a couple of clan constables.”
“Then you had the better morning-after as well,” Jhoa’nen added.
Chatter around the common room had quieted a bit, though most in their clan had already heard something of this event.
“Oh, calm yourself,” Fiáh’our added. “I am only here because I need… something else… for someone else. You may be the only one that I know who can send me to someone who can get it.”
Jhoa’nen eyed him. “So… you wish to barter with me?”
Fiáh’our took a slow breath. This would likely get ugly, especially if she understood what he asked for. Her understanding was part of what he needed to know. Hopefully she did or he might be out of luck. And there was nowhere more private in which to have this out.
“I need… just a bit… well, Wohlahk’s favorite uncle knows it as…” and he faltered.
With so many ears in this room, he had to carefully choose a term for what he sought that few would know… and hope that Jhoa’nen, with her special family ties, would know it without explanation.
“I need a bit of… stone-marrow,” he whispered.
If a craggy, gray granite old face could pale any further, Jhoa’nen’s did.
· · · · ·
As Karras had peered inside the réhanâkst, he panicked at the sight of Fiáh’our and the old woman crossing toward the window. He quickly dropped off his boot toes and spun about in a hunch, flattening against the building’s frontage below the sill. His breaths came too rapidly.
Had Fiáh’our seen him peeking in?
Soon enough, he heard the two chatting away, though it was hard to catch everything in their whispering. There was something about a cask of something and Fiáh’our waking up somewhere. Karras summoned up a little more nerve and sidled sideways before he rose, listening at the sill’s end.
“I need a bit of… klau’kin rä’ûri,” Fiáh’our whispered.
There was an instant of silence, other than the mute drone of chatter in the front room… followed by a thump and the chitter of hardwood scales on practice armor.
“Ouf!” Fiáh’our grunted. “There is no need to be punching me in the gut!”
“You ungrateful, grizzled, tiresome…” the old woman hissed. “Do you even know what could happen if I did this for you? Am I not in enough trouble with our clan, let alone my husband, because of you?”
Her tirade went on and on over the top of Fiáh’our’s ping. It might have been satisfying to hear the old boar taken apart if Karras had not been wondering…
What was… whatever that word had been? He was uncertain if he could pronounce it or even if it was rughìr in origin. The old woman surely knew and had not liked it.
Karras was so tired of Fiáh’our and his old warrior’s words, if this new term was yet another of those. He was shaken out of pondering as the old woman snapped at the blusterer.
“All right then! You want to barter your way through me to Wohlahk’s uncle… then find me a… a ‘zebra’ pelt for my bed.”
“A what pelt?”
“You figure it out.”
Karras perked up.
He knew that Numan term for a horse-like beast spoken of by traders from the desert lands of the Suman Empire to the far south. Obviously, Fiáh’our did not know it. Those traders also ran the coasts of the savannahs and jungles even farther toward the world’s bottom end. He had never seen such a beast, or its pelt, but had heard that it had black and white stripes all over its short-haired hide.
Karras smiled in gleeful spite.
Fiáh’our would never find such a thing in any of the settlement markets. Perhaps the old woman demanded something so odd and impossible just to get rid of him. That was certainly something Karras wished he could do.
“Very well,” Fiáh’our grumbled. “A barter it is.”
Karras straightened in listening. Another long silence passed as if the old woman could not reply.
“Well, it will be an early start for me in the morning,” the old boar added. “So I will take a room for the night.”
Karras stiffened until his back muscles spasmed.
“You? Stay here?” the old woman said a bit too loudly.
“I have no time to head back to where I usually stay.”
With a grumble from the old woman, Karras heard her and Fiáh’our walk off. At a loss, he slid down the wall to his haunches. The braggart had invaded his only refuge after all. But then, what stuck most in his thoughts…
Fiáh’our had agreed to barter with something he did not know—and Karras did—for something that Karras did not know—but Fiáh’our did. And so did the old woman who had not liked that mention. This nagged at Karras more and more, until it overrode even guilt at not having been home in too long.
What was the old man up to this time?
Karras tiredly rose to his boot toes and peeked in the window. Once Fiáh’our disappeared into the depths of the réhanâkst, Karras slipped inside to catch the old woman. She greeted him with a nod and a smile on her wrinkled face, but before he headed off to his usual room…
“I need to be up before dawn,” he said. “Could you be sure to wake me well before anyone else?”
4. By the Skin and His Teeth
The next morning, Fiáh’our headed off for Chekiuní’s market cavern near the settlement’s station, where trams ran through the mountain to the other two settlements, aside from Seattâsh, “Old Seatt,” atop the peak. Simply getting from one to the next could take up to a quarter day or night. It would turn out to be a long day, indeed, followed by a long night on a tram back to Chekiuní.
Simply learning what a “zebra” was took half the morning. After that, bartering his way into finding—let alone acquiring—a hide had taken more barters than he could have imagined. Unsuccessfully, in part.
Fiáh’our traded a few iron rôtin or “rotated castings”—what humans called “slugs” or dwarven coins, though they were not such. For these he gained a bushel of potatoes to in turn trade for an old rocking chair. And that he carried about, upside down on his head, to the next barter he had already started in seeking out the potatoes in the first place. The rocking chair went for a new winter goatskin coat, which had been sought by another for a cart’s worth of coal. That coal was directed for delivery in another barter for an engraved and embellished Suman oil lamp… and so on. But this was the honorable way of commerce.
Barter meant both sides gained something of meaningful value by their individual judgment, needs, and wants. While it might require extra trades to gain what one was after from its ultimate owner, it was better than the human way of coin. It had stood the test of time among rughìr and was not a tradition to be scoffed at.
Too often—well, all of the time—human coin changed value in a year or a season, when what was “bought” had a price in worthless gold and silver, or copper at best, too easily influenced by nonsensical things. Certainly his people had their rôtin for expedience, but those disks with a center hole to string them on a lanyard were made from worthy and useful metals, such as iron, copper, and sometimes brass or steel. Any smith could cast them from scrap metal and have them stamped with a clan seal to certify their value in weight. Rôtin could then be traded or even melted down again to make useful things.