Departure of a Nomad

'All them I knew as a pup are dead now' he thought to himself staring deep into the plains stretched down below him.  The wind was chill against his pale skin and he clutched his robes about him against the bite of cold.  It was a clear day and Gathin Manysleeps was alone atop the small cliff that broke above the gentle swell of grass that covered the Green Steppe.  Down behind him, below, lay the nomad camp he called home, and yet in the past years he felt increasingly distant, as if the faces he saw were filled with imperfect memories.

He did not look back, preferring to peer out into the distance where their journey would take them that day, peering into the early morning dawn, the east, the trade cities on the border that were but specks of imagination that he recalled from many seasons back.  He therefor heard the beat of their riding dogs before he caught sight of them sweeping into the camp, scaly paws slapping the ground as they approached like the low rumble of a spring storm.  The camp would get no warning from him, not before the hoard was upon them, not before they already knew.

Clan Klift had grown small over the years, barely over a hundred golbins in all, and the force riding in, dressed for war, were many, at least three times their number in warriors alone.  In what seemed slow motion, the cloud of dust they threw up snaked across the plains toward his people.  Gathin had at first moved to run down, to help, to repel the invaders with his kin.  He had felt a spark of empathy, but his heart did not light.  He was perhaps afraid, surely.  His large ears were pounding with the beat of his small heart, pinkening from their pallid white.  He could almost feel his death if he walked down there, at the end of a long spear, under the claws of a war-trained steed, feathered with an arrow from far off.  Even perhaps burned to a crisp with magic similar to his own, facing some elder clansman thirty years his younger who bent the laws of the world to do him harm.  And in his petrification, he saw empty faces around him, faces he had stopped trying to identify two generations ago.  Their mortality more fit for the blood and violence and clan politics that this battle, massacre, sat in the stream of.

He stopped, watching the wave of enemies sweep in, hearing the shouts finally echo up to him past the thunder of paw on packed earth.  He was above it, identifying for once how tired he was of such life.  Remembering with distaste when he himself had ridden into camps, killing and looting for what he had been told were glory and wealth.  Behind him, miles away lay towns and cities with more riches than a hundred Clan Klift's.  Behind him lay peoples who did not make their living on the suffering of their own kind.  He thought it was fitting, that it was right somehow that the violence and the pain once again returned in a circle, a clan his kin may once have raided coming back to wipe them out.  He thought, as the first tents were set on fire, that he had wanted to burn them down himself, deep down.

That day he sat and watched, the noon sun sitting overhead before the raiders had turned away from their triumph and rode off, saddles heavy with their spoils.  He had seen a few try to flee, riding or on foot.  The outriders for the raiders picked them off easily, stretched around the camp like a net.  Arrows flying true into tiny green figures and their larger green mounts.  Their own outriders had not returned yet.  They were either dead, or unlucky survivors, perhaps not even knowing yet that they were now without family.

It was sunset by the time Gathin made his way through the camp, walking between the burned out shells of his people.  He saw their forms, twisted in pain and disbelief and anger.  Hollow eye sockets of the burned ones seemed to stare into him.  He was alive, and his kin, descendants of his brothers and sisters as he had no children of his own, lay scattered around him, their number reminding him of how many more dead faces he had seen in his years.  This was perhaps the most dead relatives he had seen together, but it was a small drop in the cup of his memories.  His cup of death filled as he walked, bringing back the friends and elders he had respected, the way their faces were eerily similar to theirs in death.

He saw the chief, dead in the center of camp, bristled with arrows, looking a facsimile of his great great grandfather, the chief at the time of Gathin's birth.  It had been a raid like this one, but the clan had recovered.  The camp had been spared the fire that day long passed.  The chief had fallen among standing tents and mournful warriors.  His great great grandson lay in a charred wasteland, the strongest of the clan beside him in death, tears of blood o their faces, not salt.  Only Gathin, shocked at himself, was there to weep truly, to let his eyes release that cup of death and memories.

Come morning Gathin would begin his wandering, traveling to those far off cities of men and dwarves, taking up habits and customs far removed from his upbringing that he left behind.

Before that dawn, he would cry through the night, setting corpses on a pyre and saying the traditional prayers to send the goblin souls on to their reward.  He would watch their faces blacken, seeing the dead of that day and many other days in their faces and the smoke, and the flames that consumed their empty husks.  Gathin would say goodbye to that life in the goblin tongue, muttering each name he could remember that night.  The tears that kept coming would dry from the fire's heat.  The only memory he would take with him into the next stage of his life would be two soot streaks down across his face, tear stained black marks that ran perpendicular down his pale white face.  In the human towns he would tattoo them on permanently, the only thing that he would keep from his youth.

Seven Wonders of a World Unknown

The seven sit at the top of the world in wonder and majesty, and in some perspectives, of horror.  To truly call oneself a person who lived in the world is to have seen them all and shuddered in their shadow.

First by men, the race that strove to achieve in their short lives the powers of all others combined there is the statue of the great wizard Zok.  He stands in the streets of the Mad King's Capitol, the place built and rebuilt over the years.  Just one forum is left untouched by the ravages of time and war and it is his.  Beside the white, stone statue, stand guard two angels, one to the left and one to the right.  Neither sleeps and neither moves, statuesque as their charge.  Before his stone gaze, a small rip in the fabric of the mortal plane glints.  From beyond it drift the harps of angels and the scent of ambrosia.  This tear was rent by Zok himself, and for his arrogance he was turned to stone.  Each aspiring mage is sent to visit this landmark of humanity and bear witness to his pride and his power, for the rip is not healed back.  Many have tried as he did, but of them all their efforts were rebuffed and the wizard's ashes scattered to the winds.  Zok yet remains as both caution and monument.

Of the gods, there can be but one wonder which lingers in the world for which no sight can be its equal.  I speak of course of the lake of tears.  It sits, not five stories above the desert plains of Sovereign.  Nobody remembers who first lay there, gazing up at the crystal clear water, dying of thirst.  Most say it was an entire clan of nomads, stopped at their usual oasis.  Their story is remembered by the bones that float through the water, bleached white in the sun and perfectly preserved.  Any who venture too close, daring to reach for the floating lake find their own bones floating among the waters.  The red-iron sand is littered with bits of decaying cloth and the possessions too worthless for even the scavengers.  There is no rain for ten miles around the lake, and there is no water in the ground.  Taking water in with barrels or flasks only feeds the lake more, letting it expand out farther.

The kingdom of animals is in many places thought of as lesser by men who forget the wonder of the stag.  True, they form no civilization, their gods are strange and obscure, and their lot are composed of dumb sheep and fish and birds, but they have their own majesty.  They say that you might see him on the hills of Nar in the spring, walking about.  What those who have not seen rarely understand is that he is not a wonder for his size, which puts to shame every wagon built to date, nor is it for his age, too great for any who live in the land of Nar to say for sure.  No, he is a wonder for his hide, stuck through with every arrow, spear, sword, or knife that has been conceived of as a hunting tool.  They are in varying shades of rust from the weather, and in his wake, little bits of leather and chipped stone and flaking metal show his tracks.  Each year the hunt goes out, and men from all the kingdoms come to chase and hunt and hope beyond hope that perhaps they are truly the chosen.  Many religions have banned the practice, citing it as immoral, but the land of Nar lets them come.  None have spilled so much as a drop of its blood.  All live to tell the tale of their strike, for the successful are ever only able to get one in their life, and say they saw the grace in its legs and the sadness in its eyes as it escaped.  These men are changed, on their return, usually going to temples of their gods to repent the deed.

Nature claims the largest wonder, that of the confluence.  There is a valley, set deep into the mountains where the roads wind round on cliffs packs with travelers.  Ten rivers, mighty in power, empty themselves into the great abyss that yawns before them.  From the center rises up an eternal cloud of steam.  Those who go there suffer the icy cliffs that pass beneath each river's waterfall, winding farther down than they climbed up.  Set underneath each waterfall is a city, one of ten or ten parts of one.  They are simply called the Ten Confluences.  Most stay a week in each as they travel downwards, into the twilight darkness and roaring noise.  Without protection in the way of magic, those who venture down past the fourth city are deafened, never to hear again.  Even with magic, the place seems to break the mind's ear just as much as the body's.  At the bottom are the trenches formed in the magma, dragged out by the rivers as they converge into one.  The walls glow and the place is hotter than most summer deserts.  Some few brave and crazy fools live there, down beyond the sun and silence, acting as fishermen and merchants who sail the underground river of tenfold voices out and up to the sea.  They will take no passengers as the way is harsh, but those who have bribed or stolen away and lived to tell the tale say that the tunnels are at least half of the majesty of the place, and certainly half of the wonder.

Magic claims the most mysterious of wonders, as is expected.  It exists not as something to see or hear or smell or taste, but to experience and feel.  There is a square mile in the midst of what used to be a larger forest that is just wrong.  Walking inside of it is to experience the knowledge and fear of power, for it is not in seeing what is there that men call the place a wonder, it is in seeing what they bring there.  It separates from you, like a shadow from a body, the very essence of magic.  You walk in, perhaps not even knowing how small of a shred or how large of a cloud of the stuff you actually have.  To explain what you would see is impossible, but I have seen men engulfed in flames unquenchable and walked away as mere skeletons, yes, I said walked.  I have seen birds fly out from a lady's eyes, silent as the night, each a different resplendent color.  They nested back within her as she left.  I have even seen the mad king himself walk inside and find at his beck and call legions of dawn-red phantasms there only to serve him.  He based his army's uniforms after that, I believe.  Those who go are changed.  Those who leave are enriched in self-knowledge.  Those who stay never last long.  This is the second stop on most wizard's pilgrimages in their youth, right after the statue of Zok.

A long succession of wither-trees claim the title of wonder of plants.  Each tree grows the same and meets the same end.  When the last wither tree is no more, a sprout buds.  It is small, barely noticeable midst the grass and weeds that spring up in the streets of the city it has chosen.  Over the next fifty years it grows at an astounding rate.  It pushes up through stone tiles and against walls and through ceilings.  By the time it has reached full height it is fifty stories tall, remnants of the city gnarled in its trunk and branches.  Over the next fifty years it will wither, dying at precisely the rate it grew.  Its bark turning from a rich brown to a sickly grey and its white leaves darkening to black as they fall.  No mortal has cut one by blade or burned it with fire or ensorceled it with magic, and some take this as but a challenge, living at their bases for their lives and traveling when it finally dies.  Few are those who have seen one sprout and die in a cycle, and just as few are there who have seen more than one.  On its location of death, the decomposing ruin it leaves behind, plants flourish, growing into lush gardens.

Lastly, and the reason most seekers stop as six wonders, is the Bazaar Labyrinth.  If it is on sale elsewhere in the world, you will not find it there.  Only the strangest, most expensive, and most unholy of items can be found in the maze corridors within Mt. Ire.  They say that some fools dug the first entrance, piercing the very realm itself and unleashing the demons upon the world.  Naturally, people were not happy, and there was war on a scale unheard of.  Angels offered their aid and the countries of men surrounded the mountain, ready to press forward and seal it closed.  When their final charge entered the caves, they found them empty.  Deserted hallways with demonic items lying around, but no demons whatsoever.  They twisted and turned and looped around.  They shifted as the sun rose and set.  The armies that went in found nothing.  For ten years they watched the entrance, sending scouts into the maze to no avail.  The eleventh year was the year they found the first merchant inside.  His wares were vile, and his smile worse, even in death.  His corpse was burned.  The second they brought out as a prisoner.  He died on reaching the sunlight.  The third died in the moonlight.  The fourth was questioned inside the labyrinth.  Hell had come to an agreement, he said.  No demon would leave by the mountain, each would sign the contract, and that contract would be kept in the inferno, guarded by the princes.  For the first few years the mountain quarantined, but word got out, and traders and scoundrels alike flocked to the place.  For a soul or a virgin or the promise of a favor there were treasures to be had.  Over the rise and fall of kingdoms, each quick in the shadow of Mt. Ire, it has been regulated and untouched, and finally in the current age it is merely discouraged.  There are of course religious orders bent on its destruction and most forbid entry to the place, but it always survives their threats and attacks.  It has its uses after all.

The rose waters.

Back before the borning of each baby, boy or girl, the storymen whisper them alive.  They sit, hunched over over their little baskets full of babes and murmur softly the parts of the soul.  They tell tales of bravery and of cowardice, of love and hate, and the little babies know them in their heart.  Their small unborn minds are pulled each way by the storymen's long hooked noses and the speckles of stars awash across the mirror sky.  With a little push, the baskets of gurgles and giggles are off into the river of neth, floating toward the lifestream and mortality.  Inside their eyes the colors flow out from porus holes not yet closed.  The sounds in their ears pool up, some sloshing out into the river from which the storymen drink deep.

The riverbank of the storymen grows rivergrass tall and rustling, shushing out the murmer further than the stretch of their hands.  They weave their baskets out of the stuff, letting the lush green fade to layers of golden yellow with pricks of holes to let the color-tears drain through.  They are constantly weaving and whispering, long thin fingers stained green, darkest at the tips and lighter on the right hand that they dip into the waters to quench their ever-cracking lips.  Their eyes have never seen the sun but in reflection, looking down in the mirrored eyes of babies and water that are their life.

Underneath the mirrored waters grow the bulbes of the pre-unborn, pink and plump with little baby shadows playing upon their surface.  They grow upwards and the supple pod-skin brittles in the red sunlight of eternal dawn.  The storymen pull them out and basket them while whispering in their ears.

Down the river, crowded with the floating basket-boats, the river widens into a lagoon, little whirlpools scattered across the surface sucking up the golden baskets and their pink passengers.  They sink, twirling down and deep into the world, swallowed up to be spat out into the world.

Instigation.

Four men, half men from the light of the fire, their backs lost to the darkness.  Silent in their minds just as much on their lips.  The trip had been bumpy so far, wet stretches of marshy land just solid enough to run a wagon over slowly if you didn't mind unsticking it every few hours.  They were too tired to even swat at the bugs that hovered like veils around them that too rarely immolated themselves in the fire.  Had they a choice, they might have taken a more maintained road, trading days for miles.  The fact that those roads were open to traffic did not make them options, however.  All the maintained roads went by the elven lands.  Elves paid for them, so it only made sense, and if it were any other cargo, they would be resting in an inn with their wagon next to or in a barn and no flies buzzing at their ears.

As it was, taking their wagon by the normal roads would just get them held up and lightened of their possessions for a sum far lower than what they anticipated.  They could be rich, just for some discomfort along the road.  Far enough away from the moore, down in the low forests or the seacoast they might sell off their dwarven made cargo for ten to thirty times more riches than anywhere in the city of Durn and without having to deal in business with the elves.  So they sat, exhausted and unthinking with their dark package stowed away.

When the bandits struck, it was against minimal resistance, little more than willpower moving the men who sat there.  Blood flowed into the sticky muck of the ground and the horse bolted into the night.  Four corpses and two men in black in the silence of the new moon.  That was when the giggling started.  It sprayed out of the wagon like a waterfall, hissing through the air.  The cargo was ammused.  The cargo was awake.  The cargo, was scratching at its glass prison in order to collect the death that hung around the place.

The bandits, pragmatists, fled into the night.  Two days later a shepherd happened across the empty wagon, sunk an inch into the muck, and three corpses.  Each had his coins, his affects, and was undisturbed by the wildlife.  The shepherd's dog even refused to come near the place.

Two days after that, the rumors started.  One talked of a tall man, striding across the moors with the night furled about him like a cloak.  One spoke of sheep, spooked into a bog in the night with nothing there to chase them.  Another tale, repeated often, was that of a strange, bandage-wrapped man who say out on the moor in the paltry shade of one of the few trees.  He would not talk, just stare at travelers as they passed.

Two months later, the market dried up for shadowstuff from the mines.  The dwarves just stopped selling it.  Not even at exorbitant prices like they usually did when attempting a price spike.  The elves weren't saying anything concrete, but they were as mad as usual, sending out their assassins and ambassadors.  Trade ground to a halt in the city of Durn.

All this called them to town, drew them in just as surely as a treasure hoard or a dragon.