Earth Chapter 4.1
It was the Eve of Aging, and the Festival of Cor Blossoms was only a day away. As he had done every year since he could remember, Earth walked the Mainway, watching the merchant stalls go up. Above the colorful pavilions and new townhomes rising above them, the Mount of the Forgotten shown clearly through the crisp sky beyond.
Though the wind coming down from its slopes was not yet content to allow the balm of the sun’s rays to shine through, nothing displayed the good providence of Elusa so much as the Festival. To hear his sisters tell, once it was a trifle, little more than the occasional minstrel passing through a a near-dead crossroads beneath a failed religious shrine. Even a cursory glance belied such stories now.
Peculiar accents salted the air. Cartloads of rigberry jam. Fantastic barrel-machines for the popping of winter dried corn. Large kegs filled with new and experimental brews. Here and there a mysterious stall battened down tight, as if afraid its secrets might be stolen in these last moments before the market’s demand. Odd clothings alive with bright colors and lively design told of the few foreigners come to celebrate.
For weeks, freed from their hibernation like the buds releasing from the hard branches of the many trees, local farmers had wended their way past the outlying mud and puddles in search of early spring trade. But today, carts and goods, servants and tenants and merchants traveling from afar, descended on the cobblestone center of town in a flux of motion and organized chaos.
This was as it should be, or so he’d always felt. Each year the signs shone brighter than the year before, and there appeared no reason why this should be any different. Once again, the Festival would rise to higher heights. The Cor Blossom Dance would be merrier. The Eve of Aging would be more marvelous. The Mayoral Address would be heartier. Betterment and joy would press forward among them as they always had, as all memories worth remembering revealed to be as constant a fact as the retreat of the snow.
There were even whispers of a most unbelievable thing. Beyond imagining. It was said that the Shadowsun himself, a living myth, was to send an official ambassador to bless with recognition Elusa’s stunning rise to prosperity. Though King of all the Ambra Coast, he had not been seen since the death of this deranged father years before. How such a tidbit of his inner counsel could have slipped out to be picked up by local newsmongers, no one bothered to question. Instead, the mere mention of the mysterious orphan-heir and Lord “Bastardking” of Ambra drew more hushed breaths with bated excitement each day the Festival drew closer.
The reign of the Shadowsun all but faded from crossroads Elusa with the death of the Madking. His lifetime, it was said, knew only peace, as had that of his father before him. But rather than rejoice in the freedom of a good rule, the aging man grew bored and anxious. Having produced no heir, his discontent overwhelmed him until, against all advice, he led a vain quest far to the north, over the Foer Drihm Wall, a boundary not surpassed in generations, all in a desperate bid to win glory in the ancient lands of the Madgyi, a legendary enemy, a nightmarish, dark-wayed people, a horror story told children to keep them in line. “The Madgyi come on nations who’s children disobey…” But so distant was their memory that no sane person believed any longer in their true existence.
When only a handful of straggling soldiers returned from the venture, tongues cut out, the head of the dead King in a sack, quiet dread gripped the land. In the distracted tumult which followed, the matter of inheritance became its own crisis. Though the Madking was unnaturally impotent his entire life, there was a late inconvenience. A singular boychild, so it was claimed, was fathered in the weeks leading up to the vainglorious journey. Worse, the mother was a mere serving maid, found both pregnant and with the signet ring of House Ambra in her keeping only days after the soldiers returned. When she cast herself from a tower window a fortnight later, most accepted the towncrier’s narrative that grief was the self-inflicting culprit, for lost true love and pillow-made promises were surely more than the common woman could bear. But others said it was the despair caused when the stewards wrested her infant son from her arms and hid him away in the safety of the inner most keep. Others whispered conspiracy. One counselor of particular power, or perhaps another, killed both her and the boy, setting his own infant son in the child’s place and calling him heir, all in order that his own line might become the new dynasty of royal seed.
Whatever the case, it was many, many years since any serious thought was given by Elusa to the Bastardking. Only slightly older than Earth, he ruled without appearance, the bare hearsay of a reign, permanently sequestered within the City of Dark Walls, no doubt pressed beneath the thumbs of well-meaning guides.
The only proof of his existence at all was annual the Seeker of the Tithe. A regular annoyance, hunched and certain to venture into Elusa at the bleakest of times, he never walked away with more than few coppers. Though dearly paid by the poor Elusans, the coin hardly made up the cost the trip.
Even this, too, was change, for times were so good that even the presence of the tax collector was a jovial sight. The Seeker came not once nor twice, but quarterly, and always at the Festival so that it was jested that his appearing was more certain than the early spring Cor Blossoms themselves. And who could blame him? He walked away with far more than a few coppers. Arriving with his detail of Shadowsun Guard, they were treated like long lost brothers, a tribe of heroes returning from a distant quest, not the once-hated tax men of an unknown usurper King, arrived spending plenty of time loitering on corners in sleek black armors, chatting by name with whomever might pass by, enjoying a free sampling of this or that, and mixing the pepper of foreign tongues with the spice of loud guffaws and “Hails!”
The Seeker was one thing. But a true proclamation, words of envoy, from the Shadowsun himself? That was something altogether different entire. If true, this would be high praise for the burgeoning township. Earth smiled at the thought.
If only he could let go of that pressure gnawing at him. That was how he used to feel at the festival, free and filled with potential, as if only something marvelous could happen next. He hungered for the crisp, warming nostalgia to take him away like the remembered it used to. This year something was different. Uglier. More ominous. Yet he could not place it. Why should foreboding thoughts plague him? The memory of her words to him before the fire could not be the soul source, could they? He did not think he much wanted to be a man so easily cowed. Still, the premonition would not let him be.
He swore at himself. It was senseless! All he had to do was look around and let go. The entire world could not be on a finer path.
But trust is a grave thing, more dynamic than sight and more enduring that sense. She was not his mother. He’d always known this. Had he not? Why did such a revelation haunt him with such radical jurisdiction, choking out reason like some unavoidable harbinger. Nameless. Creeping. A soul-deep tremor of unease. The meaning did not matter. It would not let him be.
Like silly child, captivated by imaginary fears.
Then there was Lyf. The girl who was not. An impossible love. Worse than a fairy story. Something that could never be. Something that wasn’t to begin with.
He could not forget her.
But this was his Eve of Aging. This was the day to cast away adolescent dreams and fears, to leave childish ways forever behind. But nothing could divert his apprehension. Not the flurry of the verging market. Nor the hilarious sparrows flitting between the stalls in pursuit of the fattest of them, a stolen rig berry hanging from his mouth. Nor the thought of hurrying to help his sisters put their final touches on this years display, the stall of lilac oils made by the recipe of the Mistress, which sold out annually.
Only the taint. Only the fear.
He stepped on, greeting those who hailed him with a cheery, if fabricated, hello. But his heart was not in it. He was not where he should be. Yet, what did that mean?
It should be the greatest Cor Blossom Festival of them all, his own Eve of Aging. Yet manhood met him with something he’d not expected. Turning older did not increase his joy. The foggy tides of disease instead ebbed forward sternly. He could not see why, and he knew that he could not see. This alone was more than diseeasing.