A Hollow Mountain (The Brightest Shadow Book 2), page 45
Natala had learned to use the lacquered sticks easily enough, but they still required some of her attention until her habits adapted. She noticed how effortlessly the warriors used them, Tani not paying attention to her hands as she spoke with Olondris and Slaten lost in his own thoughts. Perhaps their bodies were better suited to such agile movements.
For a moment Natala paused, staring at the sticks in her hand. They sprouted a thousand connections to the coin she carried with her and a dozen other statements, rapidly expanding into many potential conclusions. All of them potentially incorrect, so she quieted her thoughts and instead decided to speak to Mantyos.
"Do you know if there is a specific reason you eat using these?" she asked.
"They're awful." Laeri miserably fumbled at the grains with her sticks for a time before using a wooden spoon to scoop them up. They had given it to her after she had struggled for several days. "You can make so many other beautiful metal things, why not forks?"
"Oh, but we did!" Mantyos set down his sticks and smiled at them. "You do not know it, but you have just opened a box that contains a great deal of history! I will not relent until you have heard more than your fill!"
Natala leaned forward and mirrored his smile. "Please, do tell."
"Many centuries past, we did commonly eat with metal. But at that time, a single empire ruled over the Maenhu. They lived in constant fear that the peasants would rise up and overthrow them, so they did everything they could to stop uprisings. Chief among their strategies was to prevent them all access to metal, starting with controlling all mines and soon even confiscating all metal spoons and forks."
"Coins as well?"
"Just so!" Mantyos beamed as if this was a brilliant observation and swept his sticks upward to demonstrate. "So you see, Laeri, there is a reason for it after all. I could make a great many things of metal, but why change what I have known from birth? These have a comfortable elegance, and they are better for flavor than any metal, which is why they are used across the Maenhu."
That had been among the many possibilities that Natala considered, so she sat back in satisfaction. She was not convinced by Slaten's presumption that every culture was logical to some degree, but she had expected that these practices must have a reason, given the northern focus on metal.
"Everyone here uses that word," Tani said thoughtfully, "but I'm not sure I understand what it really means. The errants I traveled with insisted that it couldn't be translated. I don't suppose it's the name of the old empire?"
"Oh, it's not impossible to translate, it just means many things." Mantyos shook his head and sat back, his hands clasped over his stomach. "The literal meaning of the word is 'the mountains and the mines' but I think you can see that isn't how it's used."
"Is it a metaphor? The highest heights to the lowest depths... so the Maenhu is the whole world?"
"Sometimes it's used that way, but you see the small-mindedness of it, don't you? We only use that word here, in the north of Breilin, and so it often refers to Portant, Espal, and Wahleen. So another meaning of the word is to encompass our three nations."
"Also errants," Olondris added flatly. Mantyos nodded cheerfully and rubbed her back.
"Right, right! You see, 'Maenhu' is a military word, used first by errants. So often it's used to refer specifically to the military world across the three nations. The world of errants and challenges as opposed to the world of politicians or merchants. All these definitions mix together into a rather confusing stew, yes? But the one thing it doesn't refer to is the old empire."
Tani and the others nodded thoughtfully, while Natala simply recorded the definitions. In the pause, Slaten spoke up quietly. "What happened to that empire?"
"There are still stories told of its fall." Mantyos shook his head and began eating again. "More than we could tell now, not without the food getting cold. A boy who forged spearheads from the last metal coins. A woman who uncovered lost arts of soulsteel and fought with a simple branch. A man who forged his grandmother's spoon into a knife. These are stories that all children here have heard."
"I have wanted to ask you about that." Tani finished chewing her food and regarded the couple seriously. "I hope I am not rude in asking about your children. You have been together for so long, and your house has additional rooms... are they grown now?"
For once, Mantyos did not respond with immediate good cheer. Instead, after a pause that produced many brief glances around the table, Olondris spoke. "It is not possible for us to have children."
"Oh." Laeri looked up from her food, immediately overtaken by the emotion of the mere concept. "There are many sorrowful marriages that have such struggles. But sometimes what seems impossible is only unlikely, if there are obstacles within the body. Have you perh-"
"It is not possible." Olondris made a brief moment of piercing eye contact and then looked down. Mantyos quickly moved to put a hand over hers and spoke boisterously.
"If it was a matter of luck, we'd have a whole brood of children now, eh?"
Only Tani smiled politely, but Natala saw that Olondris moved her hand just a hair further into her husband's. The silence stretched, clearly making the others uncomfortable, and Natala soaked in every detail of their faces. Eventually Mantyos spoke again.
"Perhaps one of us is so cursed, perhaps both. We have never known another, so we cannot be sure. But we made our peace with that decades ago and used our rooms to host wonderful errants such as yourselves. If we cannot have our own children, we can raise up others."
"Wait." Tani stared at them with surprising astonishment. "Never known another... surely you can't mean...?"
Mantyos laughed and squeezed his wife's hand. "You may be shocked to hear it, looking at my unbelievably handsome face, but I had no luck with women until Olondris finally came along. So yes, we have been together ever since and never looked elsewhere."
"But... to only know one person... how can you know your desires, or if the two of you match well?" Tani asked the question as if struggling to understand the concept, while Mantyos only laughed.
"Are you saying we need to be louder at night, is that it?"
Tani laughed at herself, Laeri blushed furiously, and even Slaten smiled. Natala considered that she should have laughed, but no one would be judging her here. Instead she simply analyzed the interplay of assumptions, emotions, and reactions. Humans could seem so simple at times, yet each was built on a foundation of arbitrary rules that rendered them impossible to fully calculate.
At that moment they heard the cheering, and Natala fumbled her eating sticks as she felt the change.
Though Mantyos and Olondris merely looked out the windows curiously, the others rose to their feet. Tani uttered a brief apology while Slaten stalked to the door. Natala placed her sticks properly on the side of her bowl and then followed them.
Errants marched through the central street of Torgaadi, but Natala barely considered them. Her gaze fell entirely on the head of the march, where two armored figures carried Melal. Where the rest of the world flowed with natural grays, he shone with oppressive glory.
All around, the townspeople cheered wildly for him. Tani attempted to ask some of them what had happened and why they were cheering, but Natala barely listened. Instead she simply let the chaos of it seep into her, filtering the sensation into observations for analysis. She had felt this atmosphere before, when Bufogu had manipulated his clan or the raiders had celebrated a great victory. It was an animal reaction, something that might be impacted by reason but could never be joined to it.
As they followed the crowd, Natala quietly observed them. She noted faces that she recognized from the markets and familiar suits of armor from the errant watchpost. To her surprise, she saw Foquin and his family cheering as they watched a man they did not know.
When Melal was carried to the central square, the procession finally stopped. Torgaadi had no grand fountains or statues, so he simply leapt to stand on the shoulders of the errants who carried him. When he raised his hands, the peasants of Torgaadi went silent.
"People of Portant!" Melal swept his gaze over the crowd as if he could meet the gaze of every individual. "I am the Hero, Savior of the Coran Resistance. Your lands are threatened by the Deathspawn, but not for much longer. I have met with errants of Wahleen, and we will unite to cast them out!"
Had any of them hated the Deathspawn, before that moment? Natala had cataloged many complaints, fears, superstitions, and rumors, but she had observed little hatred. Not until that moment, when the crowds cheered their bloody approval.
"Your warriors can choose whether to defend you here or to stand with me. I will remain in Torgaadi until it is time for us to march into battle. Any who wish to serve the cause of the Legend, you have only to speak to me. We march to glory and a free Portant!"
The cheers went on and on. Melal never seemed to tire of them, grinning over the crowd and raising his sword to the sky. Even when he leapt down from the errants' shoulders, the people lingered nearby, reaching out to touch him with looks of disbelief.
Natala noted that Slaten and Tani retreated to avoid Melal coming to them, likely because they did not want to make themselves targets. She quite agreed with their decision and followed as they avoided the crowds. Yet it only delayed the inevitable, as eventually Melal found them on an empty street.
"My travels have gone far better than I could have imagined," he said without preamble. "But the Bloodskin warriors will obviously not be enough, not against the threats we face. Veron is still missing, the treacherous drunk. The errants who stand with me are strong, but I will still rely on you, my companions. Have you prepared yourselves?"
"Melal, are you sure about this?" Tani rubbed the stump of her missing finger with her other hand, though she didn't realize it. "If you announce your intentions, the Deathspawn will be able to prepare for you."
"Oh, but I told them nothing about where I intend to march, and I have laid false promises to trick them. They believe that I intend to attack at the border between Portant and Wahleen. I may yet do so one day, but for now the Zeitai and his Deathspawn will be led astray. We will claim the mine and the seal without any trouble."
That was an unusually good plan, for Melal. Yet as Natala listened to the lingering cheers, she found herself desperately searching for some detail they had missed.
~ ~ ~
Even though Mantyos had given her a thicker cloak, Tani was freezing. She'd resorted to shivering her body rapidly, letting her sein flow through her enough that her movements created all the warmth she needed. The only problem was that it led to strange looks in town, even from the errants.
At least it was no longer snowing. Her initial encounters had been as a threat in the Sotunn mountains, ice on the peaks or in shadowed crags. When she had first witnessed it falling, drifting down as if the clouds themselves crumbled, she had been overjoyed. Yet as she'd spun among the dancing flakes, she'd quickly realized just how horribly cold they could be. It became even colder in the following days, colder than she had known was possible.
Though she was attempting to meditate behind the house, shivering in place, Tani wasn't accomplishing much. She kept thinking about how cold she had felt in the mountains, during the warmest of seasons. Winter in the mountains would have been beautiful, but deadly.
Tani attempted to draw her experience of the cold into her practice, but for one of the first times in her life her attempt utterly failed. The cold was too sharp, too antithetical to life. Slaten seemed to feed off it, and Laeri viewed sein as a dry abstraction, but Tani couldn't welcome the cold into herself. Or rather she could, and she was freezing, and that was the problem.
Setting her back against the wall, which was at least somewhat warm from the smithy, Tani shifted her focus. If she couldn't embrace the cold, she could use it to define warmth. As she drifted into her sein, she imagined the heat of a fire and allies, all the warmer for the chill outside. She realized that it could even strengthen the home, a glowing ember amid the freezing snow. For a time, she returned to herself, her sein growing to accept the cold.
When she breathed out in satisfaction, she saw the breath from her lips. No one should live in a place where breath itself could freeze.
Rubbing her arms vigorously, Tani rose to her feet. Olondris had left on an errand, so there were only three of them in the training yard. Slaten continued to practice his skills, flakes of snow melting as they neared him. Mantyos stood outside in only a shirt, stretching in the cold as if it wasn't freezing.
He and Olondris did seem to be unnaturally warm, their bodies living forges. They also had one another, as she could hear on some nights. Though Tani was heartened by their love, they made her wish that she had a partner with her, especially as the nights grew colder and colder.
"I can't focus anymore." Tani turned to Slaten, still rubbing her arms. "We've been training for too long, and Melal is only going to drag us into another battle. Surely there must be some joy to be had in this season that isn't freezing cold."
"Joy?" Mantyos spoke cheerfully. "Look here and I will show you joy."
Tani turned and was promptly struck in the face with snow. She gasped, the cold of it running through her body in a shock. Though she violently shook her cloak to try to keep the powdery snow away from her, she found herself laughing. Across the yard, Mantyos scooped up more snow, crushing it into a ball to hurl at her.
His reactions might be swift, but he was no warrior. Tani rapidly grasped some snow of her own, squeezed it into a misshapen lump, and hurled it at his face. As the snow exploded through his beard, Mantyos laughed and threw at her again. He wouldn't be able to hit her, but he obviously didn't care.
"Is this a tradition in the north?" Tani asked, once they were both breathless. Mantyos slowly shook his head.
"It is a game played by children... but not only children."
"I can understand the spirit of it." Tani smiled fondly, but still shivered. "Are there games or traditions that involve... anything warmer?"
"You should try spiced fhoka," Mantyos said. "We do not make it ourselves, but it is always sold in town when the days grow cold."
"Oh, then we should!" Tani turned to Slaten, but he frowned, his sword still drawn.
"I do not know if now is the time. As you said, Melal will soon-" He cut off as Mantyos hurled a snowball at him, blinking as it exploded across his chest. Tani threw a snowball as well, and he tried to cut it out of the air, but the snow exploded from his blade and covered him. When she laughed, she saw a hint of a smile from him.
"I believe the imminent threat is all the more reason to enjoy ourselves." Tani moved behind Slaten and pushed him from the training yard. "We cannot let the Hero steal our entire lives or we'll be fighting for nothing."
Eventually even Slaten agreed, so Mantyos retrieved a shirt and led them into Torgaadi. The streets were muddy with melted snow, but the housetops still covered in fresh layers glistened beautifully. Tani thought that it would be a peaceful season, if only she could stay inside where it was warm.
Those who could remained inside, quite sensibly. Cold as Tani felt, she realized that many of the townspeople she saw looked even colder than her, shielded against the chill by many layers. Even most of the errants shuffled in their armor as if uncomfortable, except the higher ranked ones. Not wanting to focus on all their systems and ranks, Tani instead turned her eye to the town itself.
As they walked, she heard Reili spoken all around her and occasionally followed a conversation. When she was too tired to train any longer, she had spent time practicing with Mantyos and Olondris. She wished that Slaten would join them, but he seemed reluctant to learn the language, and she knew he was studying the mansthein tongue instead.
When they purchased cups of spiced fhoka, Tani negotiated the prices entirely in Reili. The man running the cart gave her a patient smile but didn't try to speak to her in Coran. She would accept that for now.
As for the spiced fhoka, it proved a strange experience, at once sweet and bitter. Mantyos showed her how it could be made far sweeter, but his cup was too rich for her. She found herself wishing they had more diverse drinks, yet she felt as though the fhoka was also a core part of this life. As their landscape and customs changed with the seasons, they had one drink in common, always familiar and different at once, tying them to the turning of the year.
In one of Torgaadi's streets, Tani noticed something unfamiliar. A large wagon had been painted a deep green, wreathed with the boughs of the trees that did not suffer in the winter. Atop it, she saw two women and a man, wearing heavy cloaks and carrying staffs. Each staff appeared to have been fashioned from a solid piece of wood, with elaborate carvings at the top.
"Who are they?" Tani asked. Mantyos stepped beside her to look, then nodded slowly.
"Ah, I suppose you have not seen the mystics of Portant before. There were once more of them, but their tradition is fading in favor of the errant orders."
Slaten had already finished his cup, but turned back at that to ask a different question. "The errants are an outside tradition?"
"Not as such. There have been errants in these lands for centuries." Mantyos spoke quietly as he walked closer to the mystics and they naturally followed. "But the people of Portant were here first. You will hear many tales told between nations, and some carry too much pride, but that much is true. When travelers first came from the west and the east, here in the center, humans lived in the forests of Portant."
"The Regent's Forest?" Tani asked. Mantyos laughed and shook his head.
"Much further north, girl. You may think this is cold, but this is a spring breeze compared to deep winter. In the northernmost reaches, the snow never melts. Some mystics dwell in those forests, following old ways, and at Icgaad, errants train in caverns of solid ice. Over the icy straits, the Chilgaan Islands are even colder yet, and beyond them, there is only the Final Sea."
