To The Far Shore - Winter Chores Part 2
The Sky Runners stood by the farm gate looking like death warmed over. They had rode up on some strange contraption, a sort of lurching multi-legged thing with paddle like feet. It had jerked around terribly as it moved, clearly not intended to carry passengers. On the other hand, it moved across the snow about as fast as a cheve could run, which made it a very good machine indeed. Mazelton made sure they were who they looked like, and came out on the porch. “Best you come on in, you look like hell.”
They left the odd machine by the gate, and staggered up. Danae greeted them with a cup of warm vegetable stew, thickened with beans and barley. She would have added an egg, but even the warm glow of good hospitality couldn’t make putting up with two days of Mazelton being loudly Not Upset tolerable. The Sky Runners wolfed it down without complaint. Then a second cup of stew. Only when they had scraped the cups clean were they able to relax and speak.
“Thank you very kindly. That really hits the spot.” She sighed. “The snowstrider is fast, but it’s also colder than anything I have ever experienced before. Not recommended.”
Mazelton and Danae nodded firmly. It looked wretched.
“Who lit a fire under your ass to get you all the way out here in the middle of winter?” Danae asked. The Sky Runners shared a bleakly amused look.
“Funny you should ask that…”
“… so as you can imagine, Cold Garden needs more of everything. Literally everything. Kind of horribly, the one thing they aren’t short of is heat stones, as those tended to survive the fires. The Throng might starve this winter, but they won’t freeze. On the other hand, sanitation is getting real, real bad, real fast. So, first priority is wound purification cores, then, close second, food and water purification. After that comes vermin barriers and at a very distant fourth- light cores. As bright as you can make them, apparently. Requirements are listed in the letter, but I was told to tell you “informally”” here the runner let her voice drip with irony, “That however many you can make of anything is how many they will buy. The offer is open ended too, at least for the foreseeable future.” Mazelton just nodded at that. It made sense. It all made sense. He could see the pieces meshing together.
“I was also told to tell you that the Sky Runners won’t try to skim off what Cold Garden wants from you, but we will be taking payment from you in cores. Exclusively. Although we will value them at ten percent above market, which at the moment, is a lot.” The Runner had the good grace to look ashamed. Mazelton waved her off.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve been spending my free time building up an inventory. You should have plenty to take back with you, and I will have lots more for you throughout the winter.”
“That… leads me to the last request. Err. It’s not a request, actually.” The Runner looked furtively at Danae, then discreetly made the symbol of a sun rising with his hands. “A private order.”
Ah. Tricky. Mazelton racked his brains, trying to think what it might be.
“Danae? This has to do with the Clan. It is likely to be upsetting, somehow. I can’t seem to describe an apartment without traumatizing someone, so… you might want to go pet the chickens or something.”
Danae looked at Mazelton unamused. “Some kind of secret I can’t know about?”
“No, you have married into the Clan. If I can know about it, you can too. I wasn’t trying to be funny. Everybody seems to get upset when I talk about life in the Clan, so I’m giving you the option to not burden yourself with whatever this is.”
“I’ll risk it.”
The Sky Runners never took their eyes of Mazelton. When he nodded, the Runner fell to her knees and folded her arms across her chest. “I Ransoom Aken-Mi-Szer, Scion of the Fallen Ghe Clan, in accordance with the ancient compact, bear the Promise Token of the Ma. Taken from the hand of the petitioner, returned to the hand of its maker. The Ma are called to take a life- Warleader Theremin Gill.” She handed over the token. “Test it, and see that the honor of the Ghe lives on.”
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Mazelton looked at the little core in the palm of his hand. It was real, and his. Still, there was a ritual here, and a good reason for it, though only he knew what that reason was. The Sky Runners were a fallen Clan? Amazing! Explained a lot too. He focused on the ritual. It was done whenever anyone delivered a promise token.
Mazelton gently raised the core in front of him, then trickled his heat into it. It followed the unique channels he had carved. Utterly pointless channels, channels that did nothing of use, except slowly gathering heat inside of them. Not too much, not too little, all in balance. When it was full, Mazelton sent a little shiver of hard radiation into the core. To the startled eyes of Danae and the Sky Runners, the core lying on Mazelton’s hand burst into rainbow colored smoke. Mazelton inhaled the smoke, pulling all the colorful radioactive fumes inside of him, letting the fire in his lungs resonate with his black sun core. Letting himself ring like a struck tuning fork against the wine glass holding the world.
“This was my oath, freely made and freely given. I acknowledge the obligation and will see it fulfilled. Theremin Gill shall die, by my hand or my will.” There was a moment of terrible presence, where Danae and the Sky Runners could feel the ancient enormity of the Ma. Feel the endless weight of ages pressing down on them. That the person standing in front of them was a mountain they tried to understand from its shadow.
Then the moment passed, and he was just a tall, thin frontiersman with a grin that could melt your heart. “But he’ll have to wait ‘til spring, because I’m not hiking through all that snow.”
Danae was very quiet that night, as they lay in bed. Mazelton sighed.
“Danae? Talk to me?”
She was quiet a little longer, but eventually spoke. “It just feels… unreal. You made a promise to a stranger, and now you will go and kill another stranger. A general in the middle of his army. Which is going to be somewhere in the prairies, probably near Cold Garden. Optimistically, half a month’s journey out and another half back, with however long you will be finding and… killing… this man.”
“Amazing how much faster you can go when it’s just you on your cheve. And probably more like twenty days, honestly. It’s not exactly flat.”
“Not exactly flat, no. I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time getting past “You are going to, seriously, kill a general of a huge army, because someone was nice to you and made you a great salad.” Kill a man. Kill. Mazelton, I know you walked a bloody road but to take a man’s life in cold blood like this…”
Ah. Right. He had almost forgotten- killing had never been wrong, for him.
“Does it help you to think of him as a maker of atrocities? A slaughterer? Of all those who died in the fire, died frozen, died of disease, taken as slaves and playthings for the brutal raiders?” He asked quietly.
Danae thought about it. “Some, I suppose. Lord knows he must be out there killing the faithful.” She paused again. “It’s more the… way you are coming. Just send a token, and someone dies. How many of these tokens are out there, by the way?” She asked pointedly.
“That I made? Just the one.” She relaxed a little when she heard that.
“It’s like something out of a faerie tale, or a crow story or something. The bad man hurt the honest villager not knowing the villager was friends with a faerie, and the faerie came and took the bad man’s life.” She murmured. Mazelton just held her and reflected on the irony of being called a faerie instead of a devil worshiper. “And you don’t question whether you should go, and neither you nor the Sky Runners seemed to have the faintest doubt that this Theremin Gill would die. Like there was no possibility of you failing or… dying.”
She shivered. “I don’t want you dying on me, Mazelton. You are a strange man, and I half wonder if you aren’t actually some kind of faerie, but I don’t want you dying on me.” She continued in a smaller voice. “I think I’m falling in love with you. I know you love me. I don’t want to bury a second husband.”
Mazelton’s heart almost exploded with joy. He didn’t have the words. All his practiced language of love and seduction felt insincere. “Make me a promise.”
She turned in his arms, looking askance. “Shouldn’t you be the one making a promise?”
“Absolutely not. Last time I promised a Dusty something before a long journey, I got incredibly burned on it.”
“Wait, what?”
“Didn’t I tell you about Humble Dougal? You are side tracking me again. I swear you do it on purpose. Make me a promise.”
“What do you want for a promise?”
“What do the fairies demand in your stories?”
Danae shivered again, harder. Searching his face for… something.
“A child.” She breathed. “Go, do your wicked business, and return to me, Mazelton. Come back safe, and you shall father my firstborn. Our first child, first of the Mountain Ma.”
Mazelton kissed her, hard. Danae tasted blood- hers or his she didn’t know.
“It’s a promise.”
