Into the Raging Mountains Read online

  With her hands on her hips, she searched, first near, and then far, and then farther. Immediately, she looked to the field that had beckoned her daughter’s attention all day long. There was nothing to be seen. Many neighbors poked their heads out of their doors and surrounding tentflaps with questioning looks and rolling eyes.

  Nothing called back. No one answered her searching voice. Her calls echoed off the hillside of their home and bounced back from the farthest mountainsides. No reply came.

  Azure was gone. Long gone.

  *

  A Brief Recent History of the Corded Family Farm

  All the harvest crops were dead.

  The bountiful farm that had been passed down for generations, the land that had been worked and guarded and bled over, the dirt that had nurtured their family, all lay parched and burnt before him.

  It was not that the fire was unexpected, more so that its damage was so severe. The Cordeds had been too short of hands to fight the blaze and the barns burnt with the combustion of a forge-fire, climbing to the sky with the hunger of the unending flame, hot and fast. There was no option but to run, run far away, try to outrun the burn.

  Little was salvaged, just a few trinkets grabbed on the way out the doorway, fleeing a roof that already smoked and had caught in several places. At the distant fences of the outlying orchard they had gathered, a misfit band of scarecrows and watched the furious consuming element, as it stole their lives from them. It appeared as a beast with a mighty hunger, an unquenchable feeding frenzy. What could any man do against such unanswerable desire?

  Most of the water had dried out long before, the little bit left in the well would only last the few remaining members another half-mooncycle or so. They could not sacrifice to the fire their last remaining source of drink. So, all they had, all that they had worked for, their shelter and their home: all of it burned.

  Afterwards, picking through the rubble and ash that remained, the men and women found scraps of items, partial bits of paper, clothes, toys, accessories, furniture. All of it was pervasively inhabited by the ghosts of flame, by the dense smoke that still hung like an angry mid-cold season’s storm cloud, low above the charred ruins. Everything smelled of the gluttony of fire, so much so that their noses stopped registering the scent.

  Their eyelashes, skin, hair, clothes, the pores of their exposed skin, and the inside of their mouths all were imbued with the flavor of ash, the smell of sorrow. When the destitute survivors coughed from sifting through the burnt buildings, they sounded like the gruntings of foraging pigs, low and deep.

  Rethendrel couldn’t help but think how happenstance it was that some few precious bits and ends were spared from the intense heat and its overwhelming destruction, preserved in a chance of incalculable odds. In the corner where his room had been, he found behind his old dresser, tucked between the wall and the charred, still ember-lit wood of his bureau a small drawing that had been done of his parents at the harvest fair three or four cycles past.

  The thin, delicate hand that had captured their likenesses was still clearly visible on the brittle paper. It was as if Rethendrel’s memories, his childhood were vanished away, consumed in a moment. Yet, the kindness of unknown gods had preserved that one fragile bit of his past for him to cling to with determination.

  *

  There was no food. Of course, there was no food. It had all burned.

  Then, his sister Gretsel remembered the vegetable garden planted last harvest, against the cold of the coming months. So, they scavenged, the scarecrows did, they pecked and hunted and dug until their nails had ripped off and their fingertips were numb. They found meager food.

  When that ran thin, they made a decision. A family council was agreed. One must go. They all must leave, indeed, but one must go to the priests and another one must take all they had found salvageable in the destroyed homestead and outbuildings and go to the nearest town to barter for food. Unable to walk far anyway, some few were forced to stay clustered on the edges of the destroyed land, hidden only by the sparse protection of the trees.

  Those few could only wait on the arrival of saving help. Meanwhile, they whittled down the remaining food, waiting for the faintest vague image of a returning solace. Watching for the distant outline of their rescuers, they counted down the days of light. Hoping against the crush of darkness that some mercy would be found, either in the divine will of the temples or from the barter of money in the marketplace. They waited for their promise of continuation, as the food dwindled and the water level fell.

  They huddled, a pathetic bunch of wet crows soaked in a rainstorm, flightless birds against the power of nature and forces outside their reckoning.

  *

  Mossy growth covered the stacked rocks for as far Gretsel could see. Heavy and thick, almost a carpet of green and gray across the old stone wall, it lent a merry air to the solemn place. Welcoming in its vitality and plushness, the colors beckoned the weary to come inside and find some small measure of tranquility.

  She had walked around the rockwall for the better portion of available sunlight, and still seemed to be unable to find any opening into the temple. The nearest building was visible but started from the edge of the walled enclosure, which was easily the height of six men above her head. And above that, barely recognizable, was a window. High in the battlement that looked over the surrounding lands, it was a singular opening, paned in frozen lightning, bounded in iron.

  Grateful for the foliage that surrounded the structures, at least she was not fainting from the terrible heat that parched the lowland and strained the mind. She tried to throw sticks over the wall, yet she had no reward for her efforts. Then she tried to send the missiles over with weighted rocks. Sadly, she could not send any high enough to breach the top of the green-carpet-clad barrier.

  Her voice was raw from calling to the inhabitants for mercy, for notice, for food.

  No one responded. No magic door opened. She was roundly ignored or unnoticed. Whether the slight was intentional or not did not matter to her. She came for help and was met with oblivious grandeur, beauty that had given her nothing and left her family to starve.

  Walking stiffly to the scrub in the nearby mountainside glade, she gathered and broke small tree limbs and bound strips of supple willow around joints. The sturdy wooden ladder that she created was simple and yet sufficient. With some struggle she carried it, mostly dragging against the soft ground, back to the carpeted enclosure.

  Leaning it against the mossy wall, her sigh of exasperation and frustration was the barest whisper of condemnation to the uncaring gods. What was the point of a temple no one could enter? How could she seek relief and redress if she could not be heard by the Divine within? Her mounting frustration was scalable but the wall was not. The ladder’s highest point only reached partially up the whole side of the high barrier.

  With a squaring of the shoulders and a look of determination found only in the very young or the very desperate, she stomped straight back into the glade and built another ladder. This one was thinner and longer, with only the first two rungs the size of her original creation. With some amount of agitation impeding her coordination, still the girl managed to construct a fairly strong length of assembled wood, which when completed was also dragged to the same spot of imposing moss-face. With agility typical of her youth, she climbed the first ladder.

  Upon reaching the top of the original construct, she reached over and grabbed the top-edge of the second. The resultant fall was expected but hurt nonetheless.

  The next move required a fine bit of balance and speed as she cast a heavy rock, bound in rope from her belt as high as she could while standing on the top rung of the makeshift ladder. It whistled past her head on the way back down, almost knocking her unconscious. Winding the length of rope again, she threw with all her remaining energy, almost making herself dizzy in the process. This time her efforts were rewarded with a satisfying thunk as the bound rock cleared the top-edge and flew beyond her ken.
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  She tugged a few times on the rope, mostly hoping it would catch on something, some edge beyond her sight. With great satisfaction, it did. She couldn’t tell from her vantage point half way up the rock if the whole thing was enough to take her to the temple’s window. All she had was that moment of success. It watered her determination and fed her tiny flickering hope.

  Her balance was amazing, and her limbs were strong, but even then, the length of the temporary ladder was extended so greatly that she felt like a bug in the middle of a long blade of grass; going to the end would probably result in the whole of it collapsing back to the unforgiving earth. People’s lives depended on her success: the only people who mattered to her. She would not stop without having expended everything. If she failed, what would be left of her loved ones, her family, or her homestead?

  One hand over another she climbed the thin, swaying rope, higher and higher against the push of the wind and the pull of the earth. As she reached the bending of rock and rope, she dare not look up or down. The risk of losing her balance was too real to contemplate. Stretching upward, one hand wandered the breadth of available wall, searching.

  There! She found a handhold, a grip to cling onto.

  Swinging her body upward in an arc, the girl’s eyes were momentarily blinded as she found herself looking directly into the revealed sun. With one arm fully over the top ledge, she used her other to slowly pull her ribcage above the last stone fortification. Closing her eyes against the onslaught of light pouring into her face, she pushed and fought her body over the abysmal edge. There she lay, straddling the rock, breathing in deep gulps but still quiet, observing the layout of the temple grounds.

  She sat on the farthest edge of the temple’s mountainside, away from all other buildings. The one window she had seen from the ground outside was still out of reach to her from the vantage of the wall. She could easily see the path that wended its way to the door of the building and the wooden supports for the built-in stairs staggered rising along the wall’s face. It led to the taunting window opening she had seen below.

  Without looking around at any other options, she slid down the side of the interior wall, successfully keeping some hand grips so that her descent was not too rough. The height of one man was all the distance she dropped before coming to the walking-ledge, the perimeter path that seemed to encircle the whole of the mount. Hurrying down the next narrow pathway, going directly to the front of the nearest building, she pushed open the wooden doorhandle, which creaked at the unwelcomed intrusion.

  Standing in the dark for a long while, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness, she heard no sounds of occupation. That did not dissuade her from entering; this was a temple after all. The divine was never easy to find, nor to communicate with. It has to be searched out and bidden, bound, or begged to intervene. That was why she had chosen to come. She knew she was the only one who could or would be crafty enough to force the hands of the Gods to her need. She would not return empty handed.

  Her agile hands ran along the inside of the stone and brick structure, a finer stone than the walls to be sure. Slick and cold and removed from all feeling, the marble gave nothing back to her questing hands.

  Mostly by the guiding tips of her fingers’ touch, the girl made her way forward, tracing her journey along the polished, cold wall. Gretsel was so glad to have found the right path, the stairway of her dreams, that she almost tripped on the first wooden riser. Taking care to step only on the very edge of each stair to avoid the shrill creak of old wood, she softly came on, up and up until she reached the landing.

  Two doors were in front of her, side by side. One was rough, bent and wooden, carved with the finest images of men and beasts. It was as if she could see the whole of creation depicted on its panels and so accurately that they seemed to move, play, and fight with each other. Touching it just barely with the edge of one fingertip, she was not surprised to feel a certain warming thrum that echoed from within her heart and body to the life and living that was shown.

  Reaching out her hand to pull the doorstring that would presumably unlatch the inner lock, she paused a moment and considered. What of the other door? What if they are different rooms? The wood-carved door was away from the exterior window, the second door seemed to be the closer one to the supporting structure of thick stonewall.

  Looking at the other door, the girl’s eyes were hindered somehow from seeing the exact carvings. There were depictions for certain but they were subtly incised and vague to the eyesight. Leaning nearer, she couldn’t make out the specific details of any particular beast, just the occasional flick of a tail or the slash of a claw, although sometimes she thought she saw the sparkle of an eye, flashing outward.

  Something of the second door made her reluctant to touch it. Instinct or not, she still needed desperately to find answers to her immediate and pressing questions. People were counting on her. My people. Glancing again at both doors, she leaned to the wooden one and pulled the leather latch slightly.

  Swinging open soundlessly, the door revealed a well-lit room with access to the outside light through three ornate windows, one on each side, the largest in the middle. It was not a large room. The supports flowed upward with swirls carved into the stonework and met together forming into the rays of a lofty sun’s orb. The beams of light streaming through the exterior windows bounced off gleaming tesserae. Even as the celestial orb outside had almost ended its journey for the day, the golden sun of the ceiling mural glowed all the more warmly.

  For a few moments she did not even move, so breathtaking was the beauty that filled the empty places in her heart. A cleansing flow of rising joy followed. Standing small and insignificant in the room, she couldn’t help but be gladdened even with her own heavy burden of loss and sorrow.

  Initially, she had thought the room empty. As she looked more closely she saw an alcove under each window’s base, each filled with tiny scales carved of some white substance. Bone, possibly? Two alcoves held just the measuring weights, the last also held a red gemstone the size of her thumb.

  Her mind raced faster than reason in the blink of her eyelids. That stone could buy food from anyone in the midst of a drought! That stone alone would solve her problems, ending the misery of her family’s plight. Who needs the gods when the greed of men would feed me and mine just as well? Grabbing the stone, she did not wait for the repercussions. Sprinting out the door, she started for the staircase.

  No response came to the theft, at least none that she could see. Emboldened, she listened for a moment, straining to hear any outcry. There was nothing. Quick as a darting sparrow after an insect meal, she pulled the doorstring for the second door, hoping to find another gemstone waiting right inside.

  Her hand pushed the glassy portal open. Her eyes were eager to see the wonders of the second room. Perhaps even more gems for the taking? After all, what if one gem wasn’t enough to feed and clothe her family? Two would be better, yes, definitely two. What would she find?

  She saw trees.

  Where am I?

  Looking around, she discovered she was mysteriously in the glade outside the temple again, the glade that had lent her the wood for ladders and the thin bark for binding. How did I get here?

  Laying on her back, she stared up at the sky, cerulean blue and full of puffy white clouds, bits of floating wisps in a serene sky. The sun was just setting over the farthest mountain ridge. She was alone. The temple mount was gone. She should have been able to see it even from her vantage point; the trees were not that thick.

  Raising her fist to her view, her clutched hand still held the large crimson stone, to her great relief. It was the end all their sorrows, the provider of security in troubled times, the key to the good life. It was the answer to her prayers, held in her hands, tangible and real. Pocketing the red gem, she thought about the visit to the temple. Religion is clearly not all it is said to be. Happy, she lay there drifting in thought, gathering her energy for a hurried journey home.

 
A twig snapped in the nearby glade.

  Startled she looked up, half rising. Stepping clear of the surrounding trees and shrubbery, daintily picking its way through the green leaves came a small, gray donkey.

  Walking up to her without any display of startlement, the beast stopped nose to nose with the girl. As if he was expecting me? Their eyes met. A friendly little nicker escaped his muzzle. Such a sweet little animal—I wonder where he came from? She thought lazily. The coarse hairs from his snout glided over her skin, her cheek, her hair. He whuffed half a sneeze, stomped his feet and sat.

  “What’s your name, little one?” She asked the donkey, rhetorically.

  A booming voice echoed in her mind, shattering the peace, as the unexpected reply came thundering between them, “I am known by many names, in many lands, through many ages, but you will always call me Master.”

  *

  The young man was clearly destitute, not even the thieves harassed him about not having the ribbon of Thenta displayed with his wares. The charcoal smudges on his face and unkempt appearance spoke volumes about the troubles that haunted him.

  Pity was the most common expression on the faces of strangers passing his pathetic display, followed by a silent disgust and a gesture to ward off ill-fortune. Whatever had happened to the boy-man wasn’t a gladsome occurrence, nor was it pretty to behold.

  At first, young Rethendrel had called to the walking public to ask them to buy his scavenged remains of his life and family, but soon he grew weary and tired. Then he just sat there, defiant and miserable, his hope fading. Trying to sell such a mixed collection of items on short notice made him prey to anyone looking for slashed bargains, when a sale was forced the benefit was all to the buyer. Yet, it was almost as if people avoided even looking at his offered merchandise, probably to avoid eye contact with the unfortunate skeleton that guarded them.