The Kine of Farnwen

Book One of The Anthem of Gaias

THE KINE OF FARNWEN

Book One of The Anthem of Gaias

© 2015-2021 by Janet L. Hilbert

Prologue

The moon had set and the woods were nearly pitch dark. It would be another hour or two til sunrise. The only sounds rising from the forest were those of the nocturnal birds, the raptors and pink nightjays at their rounds. Occasional screeches from the hawks would be rejoined by the distinct “You. You there. I see you” call of the jays. Three women and eight men worked silently in the dark; they would not light a fire to guide them as it was folly to do so. They hauled crates – heavy, clinking with a swishing liquefied sound, and stacked them into the back of three small wagons. Better to use smaller, faster traps than to put all their goods in one basket, so to speak. There were horses for the rest of them; they'd have to ride escort of course to the meeting place. All were armed.

It had been a long night to cap off a long three months, but finally their efforts would pay off. The three drivers had been practicing guiding their teams of horses in pure darkness; they were ready. The largest of the women, tall but bent with years of labor, grey headed, wrinkled as an old apple, walked back into the dark and hidden building to make sure nothing had been left behind. All clear.

But as she met the threshold of the door on her way out, there was a sound, out of nowhere. A sort of thwack. She heard grunts, heard something fall heavy and wet to the ground. Someone lit a torch and she saw, with wide-eyed horror, that two of her compatriots lay dead on the ground, their throats having been slit in a single stroke. But the perpetrator was nowhere to be—no, there she was, having flipped from out of the darkness onto the stack of brandy crates nearest the middle wagon – just like that, instantly and soundlessly. White hot rapier in hand, something like a golden light surrounding her, terrible, fearsome. Hay coloured hair falling out in spots from the immaculately grey cap atop her head. Freckles against milk-white skin, a slight upward curve to her lip giving the only outward indication that she might be enjoying her task. Eyes of green so deep and luminous that they may have been concentrated moonlight. The woman felt her bowels give way but ignored it, falling to her knees in the soft black soil and raising up her hands in surrender.

Far across the Forests and the Sands, the sun had begun to rise on the eastern coast. A wiry, tanned woman sat alone, plainly attired, back against a tall and mud-covered edifice with her reddish brown hair gathered up neatly behind her. She'd been meditating and now stood, holding a staff and preparing to duel. Shortly she was joined by another, a man taller even than herself and nearly as slim. They bowed to one another and came up engaged. The woman's staff glowed brilliant silver-white and twirled about so quickly that it could only be perceived as a trace of flare. The duel was long, well-fought, but she was victorious in the end. Her sparring partner knelt before her, bowed his head, held his own staff horizontally in front of her. She bowed in return, shook his hand, helped him up, and they hugged briefly before walking towards a large, bustling village with an impressive port and noises and smells that were as exotic as they were reassuringly friendly. At the little city's edge, the sea, turquoise and flawless in the brand new light of morning, stretched into eternity.

Back in the forest, the would-be bootleggers now found themselves surrounded. “You'll not try to escape if you know what's best for you,” the deadly woman had announced. “By order of the Emperor, the Hand of Shaia now arrests you for illegal production and conspiracy to sell unlicensed alcohol.” Two dozen strong men wearing uniforms that matched hers, blue and grey, set about cuffing each of the group— The two corpses excluded, naturally. There would be no attempt at escape. The Captain's reputation ensured that. Jail awaited, but they each hoped they'd manage to escape the noose and simply have to perform service for the realm.

The woman from the coast, meanwhile, was now in her small room, her staff and a worn saffron cloak hung neatly on a peg set into the wall. The room was sand-colored, made of bricks like most of the buildings around, but it was brightly decorated. Anointed candles had been lit as well as an ancient incense, and the woman swept the thick rug in the room's middle, although it clearly did not need it. Then she knelt, head bowed at first, and something within her transformed, casting a blue-white sort of nimbus all around her. When the knock on the door came, she rose to answer it and a lady entered at her invitation. They sat for a few minutes, talking, at the table. Then down to the rug where the woman knelt behind her sitting guest. Something in this shaman's face looked more than human now, as if she were supplemented with a spirit and indeed it infused her from forehead to foot in a calming, blue-white hue. She bade her guest close her eyes and placed her hands on her shoulders. The bluish light began ever so slowly to seep into the patient's own body. While the guest appeared fully relaxed, something was definitely turbulent inside of her, and the blueness trailed through her from both her shoulders to meet somewhere in the middle, not far south of the heart, in the bowel. Where the two paths of light met, there was a popping sound and the woman groaned a bit, but let the shaman's grip on her continue.

The popping ceased and was replaced by purple and red hues as if the blue had intensified and warmed somehow. The color became more and more defined, indeed, so bright that it was too much to look upon, but just when it seemed the aura might actually burst something, it muted somewhat, turned green, then yellowish – the sulfurous hue of a boiled egg's yolk. It stayed that way for a time and the shaman bade the woman lie down. Then, without removing her other hand, she moved her right from shoulder slowly down to the affected area, and held it there. More blue-white light. Something sparkling. The feeling of a bubble bursting – painfully but mercifully brief. And then, like magic, the blue light spreading, uninhibited, throughout the patient's body. She sat up, smiled, glad tears staining her brown skin. She thanked the shaman profusely. Whatever had been eating at her, physically, spiritually, had dissipated. The shaman simply hugged her silently for a moment. When the woman left, she placed some things into an offering bowl; a few small coins, a cluster of dried herbs, an old ring.

The warrior shaman smiled to herself, sat at her table, and awaited the next business of her day. And in a tavern deep in the Forests of Doa, the young blue-tunic-clad Captain lifted an ale to her troops, congratulating them on the flawless execution of a long-planned operation. They followed her lead in reciting some of their ancient vows: “For brotherhood. For justice. For Shaia. For Gaias!”

Neither of them had the slightest inkling of each other's existence, or of how their lives would soon show no resemblance to the routines they'd come to depend upon for their own identities and self-preservation.

Somewhere, far to the south of both of them, a raven and an owl alighted on a single branch. They bowed to each other without sound. The coyote at the base of their fir tree acknowledged them with an incline of his muzzle, then raised it and howled at the setting moon.

PART ONE: THE RED COMPANY

AHNREN

The visions had been brutal. As Ahnren strode through the sand-swept plain, the hardened tip of her ahkh or staff guiding her as if it were sentient, they came back to her. As often was the case, she saw them again, vividly, reliving them as if she were there, though her eyes – shaded as they were by her hood against the harsh cold sunlight – remained open. Long ago she'd disciplined herself against the natural urge to fight these flashes, and simply let them take her where they would. Her body walked on, barely aware of her surroundings (nearly blending into them, in fact, her bronze skin like sun-baked sand), while her mind occupied that strange and beautiful realm that exists between everywhere and nowhere at all. It was a realm she called the Void, although her people had no such name for it. Most of her people hadn't ever been there, of course, but in a way she belonged to the Void. She always had.

The first of the visions had come on the third night of old-moon; by her counting that would now have been two weeks ago. It was stronger than the ones that followed, but it was vaguer too. In it, smoke filled her lungs, but it was a sweet smelling smoke, something almost medicinal in feel. At first it burned as she breathed, but after a few panicked moments she felt her chest loosen up and her sinuses open, and although she hadn't been ill she had the most powerful feeling that she'd suddenly been cured of something. But of what?

Looking around her she let the Void take shape. Out of the dark mists of nothingness emerged her dream surroundings; she was in a small house made of stone. Of stone! Imagine! And there were people seated around her, yet they were gazing downward, kind grins leaping out from their eyes, and she realized she was lying on some sort of low, well-stuffed bed. The people had skin that was less bronze than that of her home folk. It was more red, and their hair was fine, dark, and long, worn in plaits or held back with cloths. She could even discern the patterns in the cloths – the bedclothes, the headbands, the animal skin attire of the strange but soothing company before her. Concentrating, she could feel texture now as well. The bed was covered in some sort of coarse woolen blanket. It was very heavy but it was reassuring in its solidity, and the rough weave against the palms of her hands was as real as anything she'd experienced in her waking life. She then held her hand up before her face, noting with a detached curiosity that it was completely slick with a cold, stale sweat. Perhaps she'd nearly faced death, and these gentle folk had intervened – whatever the case, gratitude swelled within her. And something else, something new. Something that felt like belonging, or at least what she'd imagined belonging might be.

But suddenly the smoke smell turned acrid. She was soon surrounded by the vapor, which turned from white to a darkening grey and then nearly black, coughing, unable to catch her breath, and her eyes stinging too badly to keep open for long. What little she saw chilled her to the bone despite the increased temperature of the room. The faces of her red company (for that is what she'd named them, strictly for her own reference) were melting. Melting away right off of the skulls, dripping onto what was now a scalding hot stone floor and making sickening sizzling pops. The stained bare skulls stared at her, their jaws agape. She could even see the missing or bad teeth of the people, it was that real. Noise, often the last sense to join her in these Void-trips, finally began to crescendo and hit her ears hard. It was screaming. Bloody, horrible screaming like she'd never heard, by so, so many people. Yet underneath that grisly cacophony she sensed the unmistakable sound of someone's laughter. That laugh was as raging hot as the fire she now knew threatened this house, this village, but it was also cold, as if it echoed from the mouth of someone not quite human.

When she'd snapped back after that initial vision (it was rarely a relaxing transition between Void-state and normal life), she'd been jarred into the mundane surroundings of the market where she'd been shopping for staples. But that laugh seemed to jump out at her from the Void and followed her as she walked, for several minutes. Then a new, unfamiliar voice sounded over it. Not quite human? Or no longer human? And then, snap, that was it, she was one hundred percent back in lucid yet dull everyday reality.

She'd tried to shrug it off – after all, it was so vague. She'd finished looking for the deep green dye she wanted, bought some smoked meat from her friend Phadi at his stall, put as large a sack of flour as she could walk with into her shoulder sling, and set off toward home. But her mind didn't want to let this one go. Sometimes the visions, which she'd had her whole life, turned out to be nothing but noise, akin to those silly dreams everybody has that may be interesting or even amusing but don't amount to anything. Other times though, they had been so accurate as to scare her. The first one that had driven it home for her was the vision that came just after her tenth birthday; she'd seen/experienced herself holding a large brick and smashing insects with it. Repeatedly, as if on a loop. It had made her physically ill, actually. Three days later a group of hunters returning from the Uplands fell prey to a large landslide near Crescent Tunnel. Ahnren had wanted to tear her own brain out because she felt somehow responsible, and had no idea what to do or who to even ask for advice. So she told nobody and kept to herself as much as possible.

Although her seeming shyness and tendency to keep to herself were borne out of compassion for her community, they earned her their own set of troubles as she grew.

All of this – the visions renewed and the reminiscing about them – encompassed Ahnren's internal existence as her body kept on walking towards the place the sun sets. She'd already been walking for a few days, and her footprints, interrupted only sparsely by small camps she'd made, or here and there intersecting with other footprints, formed a very faint line through what looked like endless rolling hills of grassy, scrubby sand behind her. And there was no change to the landscape in sight. It was treacherous going as sands shifted and hillocks became depressions beneath even her slight weight. Nevertheless, she walked on and anyone who saw her at that time might be forgiven for thinking she was concentrating on her footing. Certainly nobody could suspect her of being elsewhere (if they saw her at all, which was not overly likely). That was exactly how she'd been trained to come across: barely there or just not there at all.

Her given name as announced by her father during her dripping rite was Ena, but nobody had called her that in a very long time, in years long gone as her girlhood. In fact, the appellation felt foreign to her now, distanced as she was from it by life experience and reputation. She’d long ago come to embrace the nickname she’d once despised, along with all it represented to her: tenacity, ferocity, craftiness, and, perhaps most of all, endangerment for anyone she set upon.

She’d not been summoned to the palace that day, had instead ventured in through the kitchens as was her habit, and she’d placed herself amid pot-scrubbers and chambermaids, eavesdropping, carrying out menial labor for the better part of the morning before slipping through the back door of the throne room and, satisfying herself that she’d not been witnessed, bent whispering into the prince’s ear. He listened in silence, then commanded a brief smirk in her direction before shooing off the serving girl and the adviser who’d been hovering. It was not until they were utterly alone that Onrahn spoke.

“There are many who fear the bite of a venomous creature such as yourself, Jaerv,” he said, addressing her in her native language before standing and reaching out to pinch her in one of her sensitive spots. Her nipple ached sharply and also tingled, aroused. She could not help but to repel slightly and yet the gesture made her smile. “Have you some fanciful tale for my amusement, my pet?”

When she did not answer immediately he speculated. “That little dormouse I’d sent you after. Caught?”

The tracker nodded and laughed a little. “My prince,” she said, kneeling, “that hunt is long over. In fact, you might expect fricassee of dormouse for your supper this evening.” As she spoke she regarded the man; he didn’t really look like royalty. Oh, he was blonde enough, golden haired to be precise, but his cheeks were too full and his chin barely there; he also wore a thin hooded shirt with his circlet crown atop it, and had the affectation of a piss-colored, long goatee. It had earned him the less than affectionate title of Prince Wee-wee. Along with his short trunk, thick arms and soft belly he resembled an obese weasel more than a regal lion. But then, she didn’t look royal either, her dark brown hair, depressingly pale skin (despite having grown up in the North of the land) and too-large nose precluded that possibility, causing her to rely on wit and personality above breeding and social standing.

Fricassee of dormouse. He pinched her again, his brow wrinkling as though he were picturing just that meal, and then he tossed a small but heavy pouch at her. She caught it without effort, nodded to indicate her acceptance of the gold payment, and headed toward the front door. But having a sense that something, someone, was coming, changed her mind.

“Mind if I linger, my Prince?” she asked Onrahn. “I have a feeling my current prey is encroaching, and it’d provide great sport for me to study its behavior stealthily.”

The prince pinched her again – on the bottom, this time – and answered. “Just don’t make yourself noticed, and you’re welcome to stay as long as you wish.” Ena bowed very slightly, then slipped back into the servants’ area to change. Once transformed from bounty hunter to kitchen wench, at least outwardly, she prepared to serve caff from the anteroom and made her study, quickly and without detection. She soon thereafter exited the palace with the air of a steward most satisfied with a job well done.

Ena Pang had not been given fresh quarry in an exasperatingly long time and had therefore found herself completely bored the past few days, the diversions of city life failing to keep her entertained. She was never happier than when she was out on the trail after new assignments had been awarded. Her current contract was, thus far, proving far too conventional, predictable. Boring. But if what Onrahn had told her held true, things were on the verge of becoming very much more sporting indeed.

As it was, she would just have to wait. Stuck in the capital she was, then, until she finally got leave to ride with all haste towards Wester, and Sudbury Cradle. Until that day, she would have to let her imagination suffice and to amuse herself with whatever rude entertainments were at hand.

Before exiting the throne room she had stopped for a quick look out the grand window, which was both the largest in all the palace and the only one in the ostentatious room without stained glass blocking its vista. The view never failed to satisfy, for the grand window overlooked Doa City’s largest public square and three of the streets feeding into it. The streets themselves, this close to the Empire’s heart, were home to elaborate museums of history, art, and science. There were also several of the most exclusive and expensive restaurants in the world tucked in between their tall, stone edifices. Within the open square, there were trees planted in large boxes, a good dozen varieties of decorative flowers, and twenty-three larger-than-life statues depicting the gods and some of the more prominent Teryn in marble and bronze alike.

It was a breathtaking sight. Or, rather, it would have been had it not been spoiled by the clot of commoners, daring to stroll, look at the art and natural beauty and architecture, sit and rest their undoubtedly smelly arses on the many elm-and-steel benches placed strategically, and, worst of all, gather in a knot with placards. Those ungrateful louts were protesting! Ena didn’t bother trying to read their handmade signs but a few shouted up to her from the ground far below without effort: RAISE LIVELIHOOD NOT TAXES; PALACE GATES MUST GO!; PRINCE OF THE PEOPLE (the last word was crossed out, with “RICH!” replacing it).

Simply nauseating. But as Onrahn never seemed to mind, she paid no attention to the throng of enraged poor, nor to the middle class tourists and businessmen on breaks. There was no point in demeaning herself by bothering with the people in the square. They were, after all, so far down beneath them residing in the seat of power for the entire world.

Soon enough, the main gate clanked closed behind her with a reassuring echo, the four guards on duty falling in front of and behind it with nary a second’s lag. So much for being above the little people – but it was just a temporary inconvenience.

As she sauntered through the high street, disregarding the scents of sewer, old sweat and vegetable rot assaulting her nose, she considered the prize now filling out her pocket. She could upgrade her hotel room, and be in rich meals and copious amounts of cactihol for weeks. And she’d be able to buy a boy or two to keep her appetite whetted. The thought pushed her lips into a narrow smile, and as she closed her eyes to let her mind wander, it widened out and seeped into her forehead. How very delicious, to be within the imperial family’s good graces. How very convenient, rewarding; how fun! She smacked her lips in anticipation of the stone drunk night before her, even as she, hardly bothering to notice, kicked a child beggar’s tin cup out of his hand and sent it clanking down the cobbles. But perhaps she’d visit the middle dungeons first that evening. In truth, she was amused at the prospect of sharpening her claws before her next pursuit. It would not do to let them grow dull.