Nameless: Bones of the Earth I-III

by J. C. Hendee

Karras stared from halfway around the door’s frame. She was too young but obviously the master smith of this place.

  Careful not to be noticed, he tried to fathom what she—or this establishment—was doing in the underside. It made no sense for a smithy to be situated down here, and from the look of everything, it had been this way for a long time. When he slipped away, it all nagged at him more and more in the days and nights that followed.

  Karras visited the underside a few more times without going back to that smithy. It was not a part of the settlement he liked to visit, and he did not like being seen in a cheag’anâkst, let alone one down there. But there he went in the evenings, before the day was completely over, in order to ask around about a small smithy and a fire-haired woman. What he did not learn fixated him as much as what he did learn.

  Her family had resided here for as long as any under-dweller remembered, and many of them had been down here for generations. But no one he met knew precisely why the Yêarclág family of the Jayne, the smallest clan in the Dunwalah tribe, had been here longer than the oldest could recall. More than a handful mentioned an “ancient” dark dishonor that kept the family in a fallen state. One or two mentioned something about a “traitor” of bygone days, and when questioned they did not know much more. All that was said was some ancient ancestor had done something horrid, or so they guessed. That even this had happened meant that his or her kin had not stopped it, so likely they had been in on it as well.

  Even those who did not mention this shied away when Karras asked them about it. His disgust with these people grew.

  Honor had its dark side… when people clung to a blind judgment, not even remembering the reason for it, and all for the sake of tradition! It seemed he had only one place left to learn the truth.

  Karras finally returned to that dim, dingy smithy, but he had hesitated again near the open doorway.

  This woman did not even know him, so who was he to go prying into her heritage? He still wanted to know more, for he had already begun to think of her in other ways. She worked hard and had to be well-skilled to make even a paltry living under her hidden burden of heritage. Yet she had a rightful pride for that, though she did not push it on others from what he had learned. She kept to herself even more than he did.

  No, she would not be suitable to his parents as a chosen mate, but she was suitable to him for what he needed, more so than he had actually thought anyone would be. With all that she was, she would not make him miserable like his brother and sister with their arranged mates. And he would help her, all that he could, in exchange.

  “What do you want?”

  Karras started to awareness with a back step as he looked right into the eyes of Skirra Yêarclág, now standing in the doorway. How long had he just stood there dawdling, lost in thought?

  “Umm… I…,” was all he got out.

  Skirra Yêarclág cocked her head with narrowed suspicious eyes and looked him up and down.

  Karras became more than aware that his attire made him an odd sight in these depths. Certainly no one down here would be just wandering about in a freshly pressed linen shirt and split vestment, let alone brandishing a polished—if a bit worn—brass belt buckle with the vubrí emblem of his family.

  He tried to fumble out something. “I was… was just—”

  “Are you all right?” she asked with a frown, though it sounded like an accusation.

  Karras thought fast for any excuse. “I was… wondering about this place. I never knew there were smiths down—”

  “Very few,” she cut in. “So what do you need?”

  That ended any notion of questioning her, and yet he needed some reason not to leave as yet.

  “I thought I… I might barter for services… maybe?”

  That was so pathetic! Karras shriveled with a string of self-abusive curses runnig through his head. He had traded and bartered skillfully, with or without his father or mother present, in at least three other cultures in five nations. What was wrong with him?

  He could not get anything better to come out as he looked into the face that had riveted him in the marketplace. He just stood there like a half-wit.

  With her head still cocked, Skirra Yêarclág blinked slowly twice. Perhaps with a quick flit of her eyes, she looked him over once more. Certainly there were other smiths in the upper, more respectable levels. The master engraver who had made the buckle he wore, and did so for all of his family, had a shop out on the mountainside itself.

  “All right” she finally answered, as she turned away. “Come inside.”

  Karras followed her in, and even the two workers within the dingy smithy paused at the sight of him.

  “So what is it you need?” Skirra asked, standing with arms folded and her back to the forge.

  He had to follow through on his paltry excuse, and so, “I was hoping… perhaps… could you duplicate my buckle? I would like one that did not need so much cleaning up.”

  Skirra Yêarclág’s eyes narrowed again as she looked down at the buckle on his belt, and Karras bit his tongue.

  How much more pathetic could he get? There was nothing wrong with the buckle that a bit of polishing could not fix. He probably looked even more pompous in wanting to replace it.

  “I do not work in brass,” she finally replied. “I cannot afford the raw material or equipment to make such an alloy.”

  Karras sighed in relief, thinking he might have an out.

  “But I will barter for that, or raw brass itself for other work,” she added. “Three times the buckle’s weight for the casting… three more for engraving and finishing.”

  She stood there waiting and eyeing him.

  The amount was less than Karras expected in bartering raw alloy, but perhaps more than she would have demanded of someone… else. Now he wanted the barter concluded straight off. If he had to acquire the raw brass himself, it might be days, if not longer, until he could see her again.

  “Can I trade in rôtin?” he asked.

  She glanced at the lanyard on his belt. “You do not have that much in brass… let alone copper for the mixing.”

  “Then in any metal you like,” he added.

  One of the workers dropped his hammer, as both looked over, and Karras knew he had been too eager. But the narrow-eyed smith of fiery hair did not even blink.

  “All right… it is a barter.”

  That night seemed so long ago.

  And now… outside the same smithy’s door in the dark passage, Karras stood exhausted from a moon’s misery under Fiáh’our’s tutelage and watched Skirra working into the night.

  He did not even think or worry about the old blusterer learning that he had come here. Everything with Skirra had started out so easily at first. The buckle she had made was the one he wore now, so finely duplicated that even his father and mother never realized it had changed. Only he knew that… and what it had cost him in the end.

  Over the following two seasons, he had engaged Skirra’s services again and again. She could not have overlooked how odd that was, much as he tried to “dress down” in future visits. There was always something he came up with for her to make or fix in barter, from a decent line-knife for a seafarer to a clip for holding his sextant when sailing to… other little things too numerous to remember. Each finished bit of work was delivered to his family’s home quicker than he would have expected.

  Of course, this raised a few question from his mother, and even once from his father. He passed it all off as just idle needs or wanting to check the work of a few different smiths before making large barters of goods that the family might trade abroad. This easily satisfied his father, but his mother often seemed less than convinced.

  He always paid Skirra in rôtin, using the excuse that he could not afford time for an extensive barter in true goods or services. He knew raw metals were what she needed most and could not always get, and if nothing else, she would have more rôtin for anyone who would not barter otherwise with her. He kept at it until
he had run out of items of excuse to visit her again and again as he got to know her… and she him.

  Once in a while, Karras caught the hint of a smile in Skirra’s hard features. Just for an instant, perhaps, when he appeared at the door to the Yêarclág smithy. Perhaps she had come to suspect he did not need all things he bartered for… and there was some other reason he kept coming all the way down here.

  He did not even ask her to marry him until much later. The first time had not been so bad. Her only excuse then was that they did not know each at all, not really, and she had no interest in uprooting her mother, who did not like even leaving their little home in the depths.

  Karras knew that truth was also a lie. In frustration, he made the mistake of asking her what really kept her and her mother in this place. What was the unknown “blood dishonor” that held them down, for certainly it meant nothing anymore if no one even remembered what it was?

  Skirra’s beautiful face filled with fright, which was quickly replaced by fury.

  “I remember,” she hissed at him. “And it is no business of yours… get out!”

  He never asked this of her again, though everything became worse after that in his desperation for her… and the longing that had become more than just a way to escape an arranged marriage. And out in the dark passage, with one eye peeking around the doorframe, Karras could no longer bear watching Skirra.

  Turning away, he slumped against the passage’s wall and bit hard on his lower lip, nearly breaking the skin. The sharp pain did not mask the worse one inside of him, and he finally slunk away on the long walk up to the tram station.

  Karras no longer cared what Fiáh’our had been up to this day, or even if the old boar ever learned where he had gone and should not have. None of that mattered anymore for his loss of Skirra.

  5. Pebbles on the Scales

  Fiáh’our paced the temple’s training hall with Gän’gehtin nearby, until the kitten finally showed up and scowled at him. Karras looked like he had not slept well or at all in the two nights since Fiáh’our had left the temple.

  Shaking the kitten off his trail in Chemarré’s marketplace had been necessary for further stops made in other barters. He put this aside amid a late start, and it quickly became obvious that Karras had learned nothing nor displayed any en’nag since Fiáh’our had left.

  By mid morning, he stepped away and let Gän’gehtin handle the sparring. By noon, he stopped counting how many times Karras ended up on his backside, figuratively if not actually dead.

  Fiáh’our’s mounting frustration thinned under growing worry. On his way in this morning, he had stopped to see Háttê’mádzh and found the head shirvêsh bleary-eyed in sorrowful anger. Word had come that one shirvêsh of Skâpagi had fallen on the northern frontier. Troubling as well was how it had happened.

  Apparently, a pack of sluggïn’ân larger than Fiáh’our had seen with his own eyes had ambushed the young shirvêsh along with two surviving companions. Háttê’mádzh’s anguish was doubled in that, for as head shirvêsh bound to duties here, he could not take to the field himself.

  Fiáh’our had little time to console his old friend, and instead, he had hurried on to the training hall. But his thoughts kept dwelling on how Háttê’mádzh had never asked if he would be heading out to the field any time soon—even though the head shirvêsh must have wanted to know.

  By early afternoon, and soured with guilt, Fiáh’our turned away from Karras’ floundering and stepped out of the hall’s rear archway. He himself had not slept at all last night, or the night before after throwing off Karras, and he had made one extra stop in the lowest level of Chemarré.

  Fiáh’our had stood outside the door of one dimly lit little smithy.

  He had watched Skirra work late into the night as she scrubbed down a freshly completed length of iron chain. Rather than startle her outright, he cleared his throat, and she halted her task to look up.

  “What is it this time, thänæ?” she asked, returning to her work. “It is late to be arranging for armor repairs.”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” he answered, stepping in. “My armor is sound enough for now, and I was just passing by.”

  Skirra paused again in her scrubbing. Her eyes flitted, not quite looking up at him. Was there something that she wanted to ask?

  Fiáh’our had first met her some nine years ago, though even then he had already learned something of the Yêarclág in his frequent nights in “The People’s House.”

  “I was… just wondering,” he began, as she inspected the chain, link by link. “Nothing really, another bit of idle talk… you know, old tall tales bandied about over an evening of ale.”

  Skirra raised her eyes to him with a partial frown and turned away to pile up the chain. “I would not know of such evenings.”

  “Well, have you ever heard of… some nonsense about… stone-marrow?”

  “Yes.”

  It was a quick answer, almost, and the answer was not all that mattered. A long pause would not have said as much as the very short hesitation before she dropped the chain on the workbench.

  “So, it is real… this stuff?” he asked.

  “That I… cannot say. Is there anything else?”

  “No, only curious, so I will keep you no longer.”

  But yes, there was something else, though he would not bring it up himself. He turned to leave but very slowly in hoping…

  “I heard that…” Skirra began hesitantly. “That you have taken on a… a new student.”

  “Truly? You heard this?”

  He half-turned to look at her and waited. She frowned at him again for being coy, but he left her to linger. He needed to be certain of one other thing concerning her.

  “You took on Karras… as an apprentice?”

  Fiáh’our simply nodded.

  People talked, and as infrequently as he returned or especially stayed long at the seatt… yes, people talked. How she heard about the kitten was a bigger question, since he never saw her anywhere but here or at the cavern market on the settlement’s main internal level. Had some customer mentioned this to her? Then again, why would they? Or had Skirra been poking about herself upon hearing something somewhere?

  “Is he…” she began again—and faltered again.

  She could have finished with “all right,” “well,” or even “any good at it,” and it would have all been the same. Fiáh’our had what he needed from her for his own peace of mind.

  Skirra looked away at nothing. It was another long, still moment before she quietly added, “Never mind.”

  “Good night then,” Fiáh’our said. “And I will be back with a worthy barter the next time.”

  Skirra started from stillness and nodded. “A good night, thänæ.”

  Fiáh’our quickly slipped out the door.

  Skirra could have long ago gone by tradition and sought out Karras’—and Fiáh’our’s—clan elders to bar the kitten from bothering her ever again. She had not done so, and that had given Fiáh’our pause since the first night in the cheag’anâkst when he spotted a sullen young clan-kin. And now, that she even asked after Karras by name…

  Fiáh’our was halfway down the dark passage before he let go a breath of relief. If Skirra favored Karras even a little, then all that Fiáh’our would try to do was not for nothing. At least in that, the Bäynæ were not toying with him through the kitten.

  Or so he had hoped with hope renewed.

  But as Fiáh’our now stood just beyond the training hall with his back to the archway, he pulled a small leather pouch from under his training armor’s front flap. He loosened its cord and poured its contents into his large hand.

  Six little nuggets barely bigger than pebbles were all that he had gained in the final barter with Jhoa’nen’s or rather Wohlahk’s uncle. But he had been told that these were more than enough for what he intended… if he could find someone who knew how to use them. And how strange they were.

  Even raw from the deepest dept
hs of the earth, they glistened and sparked with a sheen brighter and whiter than polished silver. In a long life, he had never laid eyes on any metal like…

  Klau’kin rä’ûri—“stone marrow.”

  Another echoing boom, cut with the chitter of training armor scales, filled the hall behind him.

  Fiáh’our cringed, clenched his fist around those bits of shiny ore, and refused to turn and see Karras flat on his backside again.

  “Go… get some rest,” he barked. “And some sleep this time!”

  He ignored the hushed arguing behind him, and even as he heard Karras tromp off and Gän’gehtin’s slow approach, he did not turn. All of Fiáh’our’s anger was only masking fear for his apprentice.

  Gän’gehtin stepped out around him, a sparring version of a great iron-banded cudgel still in hand. And after a breathy sigh…

  “You cannot take him out like this,” Gän’gehtin said quietly. “Not any time soon, if ever, for it is not just his life at stake. He could get both of you killed… in you having to guard him too much.”

  Fiáh’our slowly nodded and dropped his head, not looking at his young friend. Those words were true, and Gän’gehtin’s warning showed the shirvêsh’s wariness of what truly weighed upon Fiáh’our.

  A bartered apprenticeship was not just a sealed trade but a debt for both sides. The apprentice was expected to succeed but so was the master, the teacher, in the balance. And the master should never take on an apprentice unless certain that both could succeed.

  Fiáh’our had not been certain.

  Annoyance and frustration had driven him to barter with Karras’ father for the young rughìr’s apprenticeship. He had only thought of what he could actually do—what was within his power—to make Karras worthy of Skirra… to help a straying clan-kin, as pathetic as that one was. By his faith in the Bäynæ, he simply believed there was a purpose that he saw in it all. He had never doubted his faith before, but now…

  “And no matter my warning,” Gän’gehtin continued, “do not take on anymore debt for whatever you have in mind concerning the weapon we discussed.”