Three martial experts approached the city of Tremallan at dawn. One entered by the East Gate, one by the South, and one gazed long upon the city from the western hills.
Only three carts stood at the East Gate when it opened, and a short line of people who, however reluctantly, had to see to their livelihoods in the city. The night’s heavy rain had slowed to a drizzle as they stomped along the highway across the sandflats. It now eased off entirely. Hoods were pulled back as faces craned up at the thick but silent clouds above. Shawls were pulled down from heads and wrapped around shoulders. Hats were shaken, spraying water droplets to the floor. An eager murmur arose as the guards called forward the first of the small crowd.
In their midst, however, a squat and hulking figure stood stock still. He was shoulder height to the men around him but a full three times their breadth. A brown coat of beaten leather and round, flat wooden buttons covered him from head to boot. The fingers of his great, gloved hands only just peeked out of its wide sleeves. His features were completely obscured by the low-hanging hood and the long woollen scarf which wrapped around the lower half of his face and steamed down over his shoulders almost to the floor.
Strongman Kreñv was given a wide berth for his unseasonable attire and unreasonable bulk. And yet when it came time to pass through the great East Gate under the watchful eyes of the city guard – nervous with uncertainty around last night’s events – he seemed to slip through unnoticed.
He stood in the centre of the Great Southern Plaza for a minute, gazing up at the famed stained-glass edifice of Trading House Celadon.
“Citizens of Tremallan!” A town crier had set up his box. On each corner, a city guard stood at attention. “The streets are safe. Last night’s extraordinary weather event posed no threat to public order, and is smoothly passed. The lights and cloud formations at the start of the storm were impressive but nothing more. There were no injuries or property damage. The City Guard is consulting with scholars and–”
“Calling it an ‘extraordinary weather event’ doesn’t change anything! It’s still completely crazy!”
“I say! What can the city guard do against the sky? Will you bat the clouds away with the butt of your spears?”
“It was sorcerors! Somebody summoned something! A dark god submerged in abyssal depths will surface–”
“The Sea Lords are coming back! They’ll take their rightful place and overthrow the paper Governor! We’ll conquer the Con–”
“What is everybody talking about? What extraordinary weather–?”
As the pedestrians in Tremallan’s grandest plaza pelted the crier with angry questions, Kreñv rounded the Celadon headquarters and entered the lattice of narrow, cobbled streets beyond. A few breaths later, he could be seen in the Plaza of the Golden Prince, staring at the statue’s rusty, weather-beaten features.
“There were no injuries or property damage. The City Guard is consulting with scholars and the windtouched to determine the causes of this natural event. We will keep the public informed. Any looting during extreme weather will continue to be punished under martial law.”
The crier’s announcement was met with sullen silence. Passerby kept their faces to the ground and dragged their sacks without seeming to listen. The crier, like the clouds, was another insubstantial nuisance floating overhead and soon to pass.
Kreñv slipped down into the sloping labyrinth that stretched towards the sea wall. He stopped before a building whose peeling beige edifice had no windows within eyeshot – just an array of pulleys hanging in disuse five storeys above. The only door was at the end of a narrow passageway carved into the wall, thirty nine stone steps below.
Four men stood waiting in the street around the passageway. None of them spared the new arrival a glance. Two of them shuffled their feet every now and again. Another’s left hand trembled, though he tried to keep it still with his right. All showed the signs of a lifetime’s dedicated drinking.
A thin echo came out of the passageway. The metal door below had been unlatched. The five men filed down the thirty nine steps. Kreñv barely fit.
The single room below was barely lit, the far ends invisible in the gloom. The tables were large barrels topped with vat lids lacquered in tar. The stools were small barrels, heavy with wood chips and sand. Even the bar by the door was a thick, long plank between two barrels, thick whale-fat candles burning on either end.
One by one, the men received a tankard from the bald, flabby, one-eyed, darkly muttering barkeep. The newcomer received a quick stare before his tankard, but no comments, and certainly no questions. He navigated through the seats and tables nimbly for all his girth, and sat down in an alcove with his back to the wall. He raised the tankard to the folds of his scarf and half-emptied it in one slow draught.
A long line was forming at the South Gate under the paling grey sky. It was mainly townsfolk coming back from the docks, where the fishing vessels were bringing in the early catch.
Dinamm stood near the rear, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. She was the granddaughter of a merchant from the south of the island who had settled in Tremallan and retired off the modest fortune he had made supplying House Citrine with cheese and salted butter for export. She was responsible for most of the day-to-day domestic duties for their large household. She was dressed in the style of the southern gentry, and stood out in the morning queue full of servants, housewives, and workmen. And she was late, having tarried at the market trading rumours about the evening’s strange events. Her grandfather always started the morning with seared kippers and fresh whelks – and at this rate, she wouldn’t even get the bread in the oven by the time he woke! And so she willed the guards to be a little more cursory with their checks, and the people to shuffle forward a bit faster, and shuffled side to side faster and faster until – horror of horrors! The jug dangling from her finger slipped and shattered, sending the whelks skittering across the cobblestones.
It took her some time to realise she could not pick them up without setting the rest of the shopping down. And it was only when she was on her knees, and had her hands full of whelks, that she noticed she had nowhere else to put them. Just as she threatened to become truly flustered, an old man who had been ambling past leant over and handed her a metal bowl.
He wore a plain grey robe. There was a thin wooden pole strapped to his back. The pate of his head was bald, and the hair which grew long around the sides was loosely tied with a length of grey ribbon. Despite his unsmiling mouth and the foreignness of his features, Dinamm felt an air of friendliness radiating from him. She got the sense that he was protecting her as he stood by her possessions while she scrambled about to fetch the remaining whelks. He held the filled bowl for her and waited patiently as she got up, wiped some of the grime from her knees, smoothed her frock, and picked up the rest of her shopping.
“Thank you ever so much, sir,” she said gratefully but absent-mindedly, casting around to find her place in line again. But he shook his head and inclined it in the direction of the gate.
“What’s that? But, I have to wait in the queue.”
And yet somehow, she found herself following him straight to the front and, while the guards pestered a stuttering foreign merchant, straight past them too. She looked back at the people who were still waiting. None of them raised a ruckus either.
“What? But, how? Why?”
As they stepped into the shadow of the walls themselves, the old man threaded his arm into hers. She did think it odd – but as they passed under the ancient stone, his arm started to tremble greatly, and he leant closer to her, as if leaning on her for support. She worried he might drop the whelks, and ended up all but pulling him through. When they were on the other side, he drew his arm back without further explanation. Dinamm did not wish to embarrass him by bringing attention to the sudden vertigo which can often affect the elderly.
“Thank you for your help. I live just around the corner, at Kelc’hiek Square. I’m in a rush, so I’ll leave you here. You can just put the whelks on top of this bundle. Oh. But the bowl’s yours, isn’t it? Oh dear…”
The old man shook his head, and inclined it in the direction of Kelc’hiek Square.
“Are you going to carry them there for me?”
The old man nodded.
“You’re really much too kind, but… thank you.”
They soon came to a round plaza rimmed by neat, four-storey buildings. Their façades of white plaster were run through with beams of black wood and decorations of blue tile.
“Oh, you don’t have to come upstairs.”
But he was already holding the door open and beckoning her in. He followed her up the stairs to the fourth floor, which her family occupied entire. She opened the door which led from the stairwell into the kitchen.
“I can’t just let you leave without anything by way of thanks. Wait just a moment while I put the buns in the oven and I’ll send you off with some breakfast. It should be all heated through by now.”
But by the time she had put the shopping down and turned to face him, he was gone, and the metal bowl filled with whelks was standing on the kitchen counter.
“And he even left his bowl. What a kind… strange old man.”
Without giving the encounter more thought, she bustled over to the kitchen, lay her shopping down, put the skillet on the roof of the oven to heat up, lay the kippers out to fry, spooned butter from the tub onto little wooden plates, poured fresh water into the pot to boil and into the metal bowl to rinse the… wait a moment. Where was Maëlle? She should have already been here to help!
“Maëlle!” she shouted into the corridor. “That little… oh, by Saint Gwen the Triple-Breasted!”
Dinamm turned the kippers over, wiped her hands on her apron, and stormed off in the direction of her elder cousin’s room. When she got there, however, she was startled to see the old man from the South Gate backing out of it and shutting the door behind him.
“You! What are you doing here? Have you gone… have you… gotten lost? Oh, you silly old man. That isn’t the way out of the building! You’ll want to go down the corridor and out to the le-”
But he was shaking his head again and lifting his chin to point in the direction she had just come from.
“What? …oh, right! The kippers!”
She ran back and flipped them over just before they started burning.
“Sheila. Oh Sheila. Where are you? Where is everyone? Has a sleep demon taken shelter here from last night’s storm?”
It was then she heard the thump of footsteps and the shrill tickle of excited young voices. Her little brother and the other children were in the dining room already! She smiled to herself, and then dived back into the flurry of last minute preparations. Bringing out the bread, cutting it into slices, pouring out the milk, spooning the butter out of the tub onto – no, wait, she’d done that already!
“Dina! Dina!”
Her little brother ran into the kitchen and buried his head in her apron. She knelt down to wrap him in her arms and planted a kiss upon his forehead.
“Dina! I had the strangest dream this morning! You were all alone in the house and-”
“Come come, you’ll tell me all about it over breakfast. For now, be a dear and take out the milk for me, will you?”
He nodded, gave her a big smile, and took the jug in both hands. Eyes level with the rim to make sure it wouldn’t spill, he tottered purposefully towards the dining room.
Dinamm followed him a minute later, and immediately noticed the hush in the room.
“My my. Haven’t you lot settled quickly? I’ve never heard you this quiet at the table before granda gets here!”
She looked up from the tray she set down on the table and froze. All her younger cousins were slumped forward in their seats, faces turned up toward the ceiling, eyes glassy. Her younger brother was lying prone, the milk jug rocking gently back and forth on the floor, its contents trickling across the floorboards and dripping in between them.
A wave of vertigo passed through her. But in a flash, her wits returned.
“Oh, it’s because he’s spilled the milk, is it? You clumsy boy. Be good dears and clear it up before granda comes, will you? I’ve still got the whelks and kippers to bring out,” she said, sending a polite nod to the grey-robed old man who was helping her aunt down onto the floor.
Back in the kitchen, a sudden and inexplicable feeling of dread came over her. She felt as if she’d never see her family again. It’s true, her father and uncles were often away. But that’s just how it is when you work as a trader in the Inner Isles. You’ll be gone for days or weeks at a time. Still. It wasn’t something to make such a fuss about. She should hurry up, stop daydreaming, plate the kippers, and… and yet, she just couldn’t get the image of her little brother out of her mind. The odd twist to his neck. The pain around his eyes. The emptiness inside them…
“What on earth? What… what is this nightmare? …you! Who are you? What have you done?!!!”
Her grandfather’s shout from the dining room finally brought her out of her reverie. Of course! She’d forgotten all about the whelks! That’s why she came in here! She took up the metal bowl and ran towards the dining, water sloshing all over her, dimly remembering she hadn’t even boiled them yet…
She stepped into the dining room to find a scene of pure horror. The strange old man was holding her grandfather aloft with one hand wrapped vice-like round his neck, while he kicked and wheezed and tried to scrape the fingers away. All around lay the corpses of her family. Aunts Truezek and Dizeur, lying on top of each other on the floor. Her little cousins Krouadur and Rakvugel slumped on top of the table, necks twisted. Her little brother, staring up at her, face going from white to puce…
Dinamm screamed. The bowl clattered to the floor, sending whelks skittering all around.
“Dinamm. Dinamm…”
Her grandfather’s gentle voice somehow reached her here, in the suspended, breathless place at the other end of despair. She clung to it like a lifeline. When she looked up, it was to see her grandfather leaning over her, smiling. She could scarcely remember the last time she had seen a smile on his face… but there it was, spreading out like sunrise on his foreign and familiar features, his long hair resting on one grey-robed shoulder.
“I’ll be taking the rest of the family out for the day. Be a dear and clear up the breakfast things, will you? I’ll be back in time for supper.”
Relief spread through her, and the agony carved into her features began to melt. She couldn’t quite remember what had just happened, but she knew that for a moment, all that was dear to her had turned into metal barbs which rent her flesh as they were ripped away. But no. That wouldn’t happen. That wasn’t real. She had her Granda. Her beloved Granda. Her angelic Granda. He was here now. And he’d be back before the sun had even set, he said!
“Yes! Of course! Have a good day everyo… have a good day.”
Tears streaming down her face, letting out little laughs of joy as she picked the still-warm bread up from the table, Dinamm stole one last look at her brother’s purpling face as Granda carried him out of the dining room.
Beyond the Western Gate there stands a chain of islands connected tall, curving ancient bridges. Beyond the islands, there is a range of hills. The summit of these hills are crowned by windmills. On this grey morning, in the revolving shadow of the arms of one such windmill, there stood a solitary monk who watched the slow trickle of traffic through the city gate.
He wore scuffed sandals of tightly twisted hemp strapped over socks of thick white cloth. His outer robes were dark over white sleeves. Each of his four hands had three fingers, thick and strong – and both his feet, three toes. What little skin was visible was tough like an elephant’s, and dull blue.
On his head, he wore a wide, round, bamboo hat which overhung his shoulders. Over his eyes, there was a white blindfold. A veil of sheer white silk covered the lower half of his face. In the steady fist of his long left arm, he held a pewter staff, its base planted firmly on the ground. At its head was a large circle, into which were looped three thick rings of brass. They floated and trembled in mid-air, as if straining to hear the voices in the city down below. His two short arms were clasped behind him, resting on the small of his back. The closed fist of his long right arm nestled comfortably into their palms.
As the morning wore on, the farmers climbed the hill with their donkeys to bring wheat to the mill. The donkeys shivered in the chill breeze coming from his direction. But neither they nor the farmers ever seemed to notice him, much like a reflection on a pool can be obscured by the ripples on its wind-swept surface.
It was well past noon before he so much as moved a muscle. The three brass rings atop his staff had gone still, dropping onto the pewter shaft with a soft clank. That had been over an hour ago – and still he seemed to listen to their fading echoes in his bones.
Whatever he heard there brought him no joy. He spoke no words, and there was no one who could make out his expression, but there was something in the hunch of his shoulders as he turned away from the gate and trod westwards which bespoke a weariness with all the mortal clamour these uninstructed worldlings invented to fill the interval of their brief, confusing lives – a weariness which could not quite be called pity.
At the very instant he turned his back – a few miles away, in a tower near the centre of Tremallan – the swordsman Mikka’s eyes slid open.
David Leon 