She awoke in the bed she had known all her life as her mother’s. The small hut that had been given over to that woman long ago, out of respect for her as the Firstmother, the shaman of their clan, now stood, cleaned and empty of anything her mother had collected over the years.
The small crystal glowed gently as it rested on the side table next to her. Beside it, the smoldering stub of a thick bundle of incense struggled to keep the scent of cedar and jasmine hanging in the room. These, the only reminders of the powerful charm that had started her journey into world of shadows. The place of visions that welcomed her into the rite of passage on her twentieth birthday.
Her mind slipped gently back into the world of the living.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, with her flowing mane of copper-red hair framing her in a ray of sunlight from the distant window, her mother smiled.
“My heart sings, this day, for you have returned not as my daughter but to take your rightful place, among the clan. You return not as a child, but as the mother to all,” she said, with a voice soft and comforting.
Her mother pointed to the pouch that still rested upon Vedara’s chest.
“Open it, dear one.”
With fingers still weary, she pulled the small knot open and loosened the neck of the pouch. Reaching in, she withdrew a couple of the objects it contained.
Small figures, carved of bone, that were so clear and detailed that she knew who, within the village, each represented. The pouch, she realized, contained one for every person that lived around them.
“I saw them…” Vedara began.
“Yes,” her mother placed a warm hand upon Vedara’s shoulder. “The wolves come for us all, when we dare the rite of passage, seeking the dream world to move from child to adult. If we do not learn to control or deny our weaknesses, they will consume us, in our own time. Each one taken leaves a shadow of themself where their own spirit first fails them in that place. Some give way to despair or fear before they even step away from their homes. Some, like your father and brother, fight, struggle, and resist. A few travel far before they give in…but almost all do.”
Her mother leaned forward, kissed Vedara gently on the forehead.
“Only one in a generation reaches the sea. From there, they must earn their place on the ship.”
Her mother drew back and brushed Vedara’s hair back from the sides of her face, then touched one finger to the worn pouch.
“Keep them, protect them, and love them, for you are mother to them all, as of the rising of this sun. Keep the clan in your heart above all else. All will look to you for the light in the mist. Let not even the love of our family come between you and this sacred duty, for all are your children, now.”
With that, her mother stood and warmly smiled. For a moment, she wavered in Vedara’s sight, seeming to almost pass into dim light or shadow despite the bright morning sun that shone through the window. Then, slowly, she faded into a shimmering, golden mist that drifted in all directions.
When Vedara was strong enough, she arose and came out of the hut. At the far side of the village, she saw the funeral pyre upon which her mother’s body rested. As she walked toward it, the villagers bowed to her in reverence as she passed. To each, she offered a gesture of blessing, as was their custom.
Standing before the final resting place of her mother, the clan’s Firstmother before her, she was joined by her father and brother.
“She gave herself to it, after she said you were free of the village,” her father slowly, haltingly said, the loss of his wife tempered only by the knowledge that she had passed in the way she wished and embraced. “Once beyond that, she knew nothing could stop you.”
The smaller Wythrigin clans of the far north often live solitary lives for much of the year; each one with its own Firstmother who councils and tends to them, sharing leadership with a Chieftain in most cases. Firstmothers in the smaller, more peaceable communities, are typically followers of Tanen, the Goddess of Nature that is wild and untamed, although many seek the intervention and guidance of Sheildaga, one of the “Embraced” who dwells within the grace of Tanen. Now raised into a sort of immortality by her patron, she was once a Firstmother in her own right, although without a clan of her own. Living in the forbidding cold northlands, legend says she befriended and cared for an orphaned pair of polar bear cubs, who remained at her side and faithfully traveled with her as she moved from clan to clan. In one particularly harsh winter, she came upon Clan Nagatan in a small valley as starvation was closing in on them, their Firstmother lost to them in a landslide. Drawing upon her connection with Tanen, she brought about a thaw within that secluded place, with berries and other foods maturing before the eyes of the stranded clan.
Vedara had, as all the children of her village had done at some point, usually on an ill-advised dare, made the fall into open air facing the vertical rock face that followed the river on its plunge into the valley. Feet tightly together, hands on her face, forearms pressed against each other before her chest, she counted to three before gulping in the last breath before the pool she knew to be waiting, below.
Her body found the icy grip of the mountain river around her. At once, the stabbing cold water bit her to the core. It squeezed the breath from her and stole any strength she still had in her limbs.
When she came out of the pool into which the river crashes at the end of its descent, she was blue, stiff, and shivering.
But alive.
Not trusting her fingers to tell the truth, she pulled the leather cord at her neck until the pouch slid up and into her view.
Still there. Still safe.
Ice blue lips tried to smile, but relief was quickly stolen from her by a distant howl echoing across the valley only to be met by the rise of others.
Her legs warmed quickly as she forced them into motion. She had to resume the pace she had kept in the fog-shrouded forests above. She had to make it to the black rocks of the distant beach.
She found and kept to the beaten path, knowing now that no weapons crafted or used by the hands of men pursued her.
Before she had gone twenty paces, she saw the twisted bodies of two of the village elders in the foliage nearby. Wise men. Trusted men.
Again, the tempting voice of fear came to her, warning that perhaps those behind were not the only enemies within the valley.
Again, she ignored those fears. She knew for certain she was pursued form behind. She knew for certain, although she could not explain how, that safety awaited her on the shores of the sea, if only she could reach them.
As she ran, gaps in the canopy allowed the warm touch of the sun to join with her own efforts and her clothing began to leave trails of steam as she passed. The howling came sporadically, gaining on her a bit each time, but the speed of her descent allowed a lead that granted her some chance to stay just out of reach.
Some, small chance, she knew.
Her mind retreated into itself, afraid to acknowledge the exhaustion that was seeking to overtake her body as she pushed harder and harder to reach the end of the path, the edge of the valley’s forest.
She passed the broken bodies of still more of her clan. Men and woman of great skill and courage.
Men and women she had known and admired all her life.
Their bodies torn from behind, taken as they fled down the path she now followed.
It was as the sound of waves finally came distantly to her ears that she rounded a twisting bend and came crashing to the hard-packed ground, a shriek escaping her lips even before the pain of her fall had a chance to scream into her thoughts.
There, in the center of the path, the bodies of her father and brother lay. The ground around them was churned as only fierce battles could scar it. Her father’s broken body lay across the legs of her sibling, who had cradled the patriarch of the family against him in the last moments of his own life. At her father’s left hand, his ax lay with broken haft. At her brother’s right, the sword their grandfather had given him was scattered in shards.
Her brother’s left hand gripped her father’s right tightly to his chest. The older man’s eyes, open and glazed in death, stared up to the skies. Her brother’s were tightly closed in agony beyond the wounds that took his life.
Vedara’s eyes clouded with anguish at the sight of them. Her chest burned and tightened. Her legs went numb. She could not bring herself to rise, as waves of pain washed over her, and her body heaved with each gasping breath.
She would have stayed there, the passage of time lost to her, had the howl in the distance and the breeze through the trees not awoken her spirit.
For the savage call, her jaw tightened and her resolve hardened. Her hands again went to pouch and weapon.
Still there. Still safe.
In the breeze, though, lay something left behind for her. In that passing touch, the branches of the towering trees shifted and a lone ray of the low, golden light of the sun passed into the clearing around her beloved kin. There, in its glow, she saw the strength of the love that her brother had shown, keeping him at his father’s side.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the moment with absolute clarity. She saw her brother choose family over purpose and she loved him all the more for it.
But she knew, too, that this was not her path to follow.
Coming to her feet, then, she wiped her tears away with shaking, bloodied hands and bowed to them both with reverence.
Another howl, closer still, and she launched herself down the path. Her tears slowed as her pace quickened. Her breath deeper and her body forgetting all that had come before, she raced toward the rocky shore that lay ahead. She drove on with everything she had, determined to reach the ocean, even if it was simply to die there, on something of her own terms.
When she cleared the wall of trees, the sight of a gold and white sail fluttering in the breeze met her, a longship moored to a small dock holding her gaze for a moment, with the golden light of the dawn seeming to shine from upon its deck.
The thought fluttered through her mind that it was lower than when first she left the village, but her thoughts didn’t grasp the meaning of this.
She stumbled toward the longship, her feet starting to drag as weariness rushed back over her in waves. She clutched the pouch, again, and willed her legs to move. Forcing each step across the black stones, then the old planks of the dock.
When her hand touched the smooth, warm wood of the ship, she heard growls from behind.
Pulling herself up to as tall as she could, she turned to face them. Her body screamed in protest, but her will refused to hear it.
There, between the trees and the ship that her heart told her would carry her to safety, a line of wolves stood still and staring at her. Their eyes bored into her, as they had before. Their teeth shone in the sunlight, lips curled back in savage hunger. Each one unique. Each one looking at her with a subtly different hunger.
She stared back. Her hand dropped to the hilt of her sword, but she had barely the strength to grasp it. She knew she had no chance to win this fight but refused to give up without honoring her family in battle.
A howl met her resolve, long and drawn out. As it echoed from the trees around them, it shifted into a deep and rolling voice.
“If you but drop your blade, we will take pity upon you. You cannot hope to defeat us.”
As the one who spoke uttered those words, it shifted back on its haunches then came to standing on its hind legs. When the wolf pelt fell to the ground, there stood a tall and powerful man.
His eyes still feral. His teeth still sharp and anxious.
She smiled, then, as she began, finally, to understand and her mother’s oft-repeated words issued forth from broken lips.
“There is not one among us that fails to hear the voice of fear. But the cowards are those who choose to heed it.”
Rising to their feet, the others howled at this. The sound of it beat at Vedara’s ears. Each, in turn, shedding the pelt of a great wolf and revealing the bodies of other men and women. For a moment, she allowed her eyes to close, and heard their voices, separate and clear.
Each one called to her with a voice distinct and powerful. Each one’s message different from the others.
“I have nothing for you, as you have nothing for me,” she heard herself say to them, her body filling with energy and power as she spoke.
Turning aside, she climbed over the side of the longship and found, to her wonder, that the glow and warmth of the sun now seemed to come from just before the mast at the middle of the craft. Trying to squint through the glare and fury of that light, she thought for a passing moment that she saw the trailing cloth of a golden dress splayed upon the wood.
Avoiding the glow, she turned to face the shore.
The men and woman called to her, some angry, some imploring, some seeking to tempt her. Threats, promises, pleading, lies, and memories were flowing into a stream that rushed toward her only to be broken apart and cast aside in shards, as if they were a flow ice shattered upon a great stone that held strong against the onslaught.
As their calls remained unanswered, they trailed off and eventually faded.
“Enough!” The sun, behind her, called at last. The voice low and terrible, like thunder rolling across the skies. “She has made her will known and you must abide by it!”
Vedara felt the warmth of that sun descending to her, then hands upon her head, pressing gently against her copper-red hair. At once, the flow of energy into her mind and body was terrifying and exhilarating. She felt the light of it shining in her soul and knew that she, too, would bring it forth as had her mother.
The woman whose hands had come to rest upon her head.
Finally, she opened her eyes again and saw only wolves before her. No teeth shone in the bright sun. All eyes were downcast, looking at the small, smooth stones that lined the shore of the sea. Heads bowed in what may have been respect.
She knew for certain, then, that they could only set their teeth upon her if she allowed it.
She saw that the light of the sun shone from her own eyes, bathing all before her with the glow and warmth that followed her own vision. The wolves cast long shadows into the trees behind them, the began to fade from view, their bodies giving way to a haze or mist that quickly dissipated.
Turning away from land, she found herself alone in the cupped body of the great ship as it slid from the dock.
Her mother was long gone.
Sitting upon the warm wood, with the smell of the sea and the gentle rocking of the longship, she peacefully drifted into sleep.
A smoldering shard of tree branch in each hand threw the welcome scent of the rich wood into the mix but failed to overcome the metallic edge of blood that hung in the thick fog around her. In the shifting shadows and mist, she heard nothing but her own heartbeat.
Those hands, worn and colored with age, still clutching to the makeshift torches that Thegel, the village baker, must have grasped in desperation, seeking to fend off those that had come for him.
Vedara didn’t feel her own fingers as they grasped a ringlet of her long, copper-red hair to wedge it into the corner of her mouth. The hand remained there, pressed hard against her lips.
With eyes as blue as ice, and opened as wide as ever they could be, she simply stared at the broken and twisted body of the weaver, as it lay in a crimson pool slowly oozing writhing tentacles along the ruts in the road. The hiss as one creeping line of blood reaching dwindling embers drew her gaze away from his frozen, terrified face. She realized for the first time that the hand which grasped that make-shift torch belonged to an arm that had been torn free from the rest of him.
The rasping sound of her own breath broke the trance threatening to keep her, and she saw the hazy shapes of others, all around her.
Throats torn. Skin shredded. Limbs twisted and broken.
Her village, dead.
How had she not heard anything?
How had she not known?
Fear and despair washed over her, and she found herself on her knees, breath stolen, arms falling to her sides until the tips of her fingers met the warm, wet earth and the metallic scent of blood in her nostrils won its struggle against the dwindling smoke.
The sudden sense of weight against her chest drew one hand from the ground, just as her tears finally broke free, having found their chance to join with the foggy, shrouded world around her. The hand that strayed to the front of her tunic came to the bulge of the leather pouch her mother had given to her just as guttural sounds pushed through the heavy air to her ears.
The powerful, feral snarls, driving through the fog behind her on the left and right, brought her consciousness flashing back, her legs immediately heeding the call to drive up and forward with all her might. Not looking to see how close they had drawn but knowing that they were rounding the sod-covered home of her mother, she launched herself toward the roaring call of the river that connected her village with the sea.
Her mother, the thought passed through her mind for a moment, she knew was not left behind in her home, although Vedara did not understand how she knew this.
A moment later, she drove into the embrace of the forest, her memories and the sound of that river her only guides in the darkness of the fog.
The branches tore at her skin and clothes as she half ran, half stumbled through the deepening woods.
The sting of her streaming tears sought to draw her attention to the fresh and bleeding wounds upon her cheeks, chin, and lips with each step.
If only she had a moment to feel the pain.
Scraped and bloodied hands held before her, their edges leading the way, she shielded her eyes as she veered left or right, around bushes and the rough trunks of tall pines.
As she sprinted near the old path, the bodies of two more of her fellow villagers almost registering in her frantic mind. The glint of silver remained in her thoughts more than the men, the coins spread across the dirt, where they had fallen when those carrying them had been taken.
Vedara glanced ahead on the beaten trail, but veered back away from it, as her brother had taught her.
“Arrows and axes fly straight,” his faintly recalled voice whispered in her ears, “and so you must not, lest they find you.”
Again, the tears came.
Where was her brother?
Where was her father?
Why did she hear no sounds of fighting or the shouts or cries of her kin?
Her mouth tensed against allowing more than her tears, her teeth gritting as she passed over the beaten path once again.
A faint glow caught her eye, through the swirling mist and the branches of the trees. One ray of sunlight, skimming the top of the cloud that filled the valley around her. One streak of golden, beckoning warmth above her.
The flash of color called to memory the copper-red hair of her mother and her legs drove harder against the firm ground, driving her forward with more purpose.
Bursting out of the brush for a moment, one hand dropped to grasp the bulge of the pouch, its drawstrings tied together and looped about her neck, before returning to guard her eyes as she plunged into the next twist in her route.
Still there. Still safe.
She knew that the old bridge must be near, for these woods were the playground of her youth and the call of the river, where it struck the old, mossy stones at the bend before the crossing, filtered into her senses. Drawing near to the path, she glanced over as it made the twist to the right before making the arcing leap across sixty feet of icy, raging waters.
Bodies.
Her steps faltered, almost driving her to the ground.
Verrid, son of Faeolyn, lay there. The man who had once sought her hand. The young and proud warrior first-born of the old chieftain lay with eyes wide, mouth agape, before the collected bodies of a dozen others.
She knew, in an instant, that they had chosen to make a stand at the bridge.
Chosen to face an enemy that had come into their lands to deal in the cold stillness of death, the younger warriors thinking themselves strong enough to prevail. For an instant, fear gripped her. The voice of it whispering to her that more enemies may still await her if she pursued her course.
She discarded the thought, for she had no better path than that which lay before her. She knew for certain only that death waited for her in the village.
The thick arms of thorny bushes beyond the path grabbed at her for an instant. Enough to bite into her flesh mercilessly but also enough to keep her from tumbling to the ground as trembling fear tried, again, to take hold.
An animalistic grunt escaped her lips for an instant. The only outward sign that she registered the fresh wounds, at all. The bite of the thorns pulled the images of the dead from her vision, the bridge left behind as she picked up speed again.
At the next, brief clearing, her hand quickly patted at her chest, again.
Still there. Still safe.
Before she met the next wall of brush and twisted branches, she caught that which she hoped had been left behind.
The sounds of movement echoed, muted by the fog. Some well away to her sides, and others more closely behind her. Even as her legs kicked all the harder, her senses filled with flickering reminders of what lay behind and the memories drove her on.
The pursuers seemed to keep pace easily, despite Vedara having grown up amongst these woods and knowing, without looking, where to reach for a longer step to avoid old logs or root holes or where the ground gave way to a rivulet winding toward the rushing waters that remained in the distance to her side.
As she drove herself on, tears streaked the accumulating blood and dirt on her cheeks, almost leaving stripes of cleaner flesh in their passing.
Her breath starting to come harder with both the strain of her flight and the mounting pain of her memories, she charged toward yet thicker brush, hoping to put her pursuers even just a moment farther behind before she reached the distant churned and crashing sound that began to seep into her consciousness.
Another streaming line of morning light drew a skyward glance from her, lifting her spirits for an instant, before being engulfed in the fog that roiled against it. In its passing, the dark images lost their hold. In its momentary touch on the fringe of her world, in that moment, she felt the rush of her own pace increase, despite the resistance of the route she now followed.
Her heart beat hard but steady. Her breath perhaps leveling off. Beyond that, her tense grimace gave way to a crooked sneer as her fear started that inevitable shift into anger which comes from surviving the first brush with death, even as its source remains intent upon you.
Behind her, the sounds of movement lost ground, but were drawing together as the sheer walls of the river canyon closed in. Each minute of her flight narrowed the space around the deep and powerful river.
Finally, she burst through the last wall of brush and onto the great slab of stone that marked the narrowed end of the long canyon in which her village had stood for generations. The stone shelf upon which the river rushed reached into the open air at the top of the long valley, the timeless passage of that flow having carved a deep rut in the slab, through which the turbulent waters charged with blind fury, then launched into nothingness and fell with a roar.
Vedara came to a stuttering stop there, her leather boots just within the swirling edge of the river’s flow, her eyes drawn to the sight before her. She had known it since her father first brought her this way, those many years before, but the beauty of it seemed new and alive in this moment.
The long valley fell away from the narrow gap where her beloved river passed, with thick forests lining the steep slopes on both sides and the long run of the lower river glinting in the sunlight as it passed well below her toward the open sea – framing the opposite end of the vast, green rift that lay before her. On all sides, the morning mists of those forests were being driven up the slope, like great, searching arms of giants climbing out of the valley floor, collecting at the open gap around her and flowing in an ever-thickening fog into the canyon from which she had just emerged.
Beyond the valley, at the shores where she knew smooth, black stones collected to form the beach, the sun met her gaze with its golden glow and enveloping warmth. It seemed low on the horizon, almost within the rolling waves, themselves, but its touch filled her with hope.
And courage.
Glancing to her right, beyond the forty feet of churning waters, her gaze drifted briefly to the stone steps her people used to pass from the path down to the valley floor. She shook her head, as she saw them for what they would be, a delay ending in death, even if she could find a way to them, and instead she stepped forward to the end of the stone sheet that carried the waters out into the open expanse beyond.
When she turned, the soles of her boots now fully in the flow at the edge of the river and her heels resting on nothing, they were there, standing still and patient in a line along the edge of the thick woods.
The eyes snatched and held her attention, immediately, her legs almost giving way as her heart clenched in her chest. Feral, flared wide, and terrifyingly primeval they bored into her. The skin of her neck and arms crawled as their gaze roamed over her, the hunger felt as surely as if the snarling teeth that accompanied them were sinking into her already broken flesh.
Her left hand went to her chest. To the pouch that remained there, snugly in the folds of her clothing. The right fell to the hilt of her sword.
As one, the snarling mouths seemed to draw into cruel, hateful smiles, and the massive wolves each took a step toward her.
From her lips, her father’s words slipped out.
“More important than the skill to wield the blade is the wisdom to know when it should be drawn forth, at all.”
With that, a sneer, and a slight tip of her head to one side, she stepped backward as the creatures before her lunged.
At the first dawn, there were people dwelling upon the lands, each in their own way. People who knew and understood something of themselves as if taught this by the very world around them…or perhaps by their own deepest souls.
These have come to be called the Knowing Races, to honor that first realized sense of self. That somehow inherited understanding of their place within Mynochral.
Come, then, to the briefest look at these first people, if you wish to know a little bit more…
