Part One
Chapter 8
THE PASSING OF SMAELAER
T he air was close and getting uncomfortably warm in the large round room. The smoke and vapors from the torches and the fyrstan lamps commingled above, competing for access to the undersized vent in the center of the arching ceiling. As the day wore on, the haze collected, and now was almost down to the heads of those seated around the rim of the wide shallow bowl which was the floor.
This was the Yldramot Chamber. At the bottom of the bowl sat the three Maegenyldras, facing the collected Yldras seated all around on the sloping floor. They had been there a long time, and some of them were taking advantage of the delay in the proceedings to stand and stretch, or lay out on the floor with their eyes closed, and catch a little rest. The Yldramot preceded the Bazaar, and there was always much to coordinate and discuss amongst the leaders of the various trades before this important event. Most of the details had been ironed out, and the schedules had been agreed to, and the preparation work had been assigned. The Yldramot was ready to move on to other matters.
In a nearby room the only door fell suddenly. A big burly guard appeared in the opening and gesticulated, "Come. Now!"
Smaelaer blinked. He had been in that dark little room a long time; ever since his denunciation in the corridor five days ago, in fact. But he had lost all track of time, and more than that, he had lost all interest in time. He stiffly got on his feet and made his way toward the blinding doorway. It was with relief rather than dread that he allowed himself to be led away. His madness would soon be over.
When the door opened on the rim of the bowl the Yldras quit their idle chatter and hushed, returning to their proper seats. Silently, placidly, Smaelaer descended to the Maegenyldras. He smiled at Goffe(!) and stood, hands clasped in front of him.
Bicce rose and addressed the Yldramot. "Maegenyldras and Yldras," she croaked, "this Traeppedelfere called Smaelaer was named cnawannawiht by more than one Yldra. He admits walking in Haunted Lands, which alone is death! He say he saw Waeccelang, which is clearly impossible! All saw gemaed evidence of his at Great Banquet. By goety he brings deadly oxagretes to very door of caves. And last he threaten Maegenyldra and Yldra with hunter's knife in corridors, which also is death!"
She continued. "In spite of all this, law and custom say we must decide if cnawannawiht Traeppedelfere be cnawannawiht. If any Yldra or Maegenyldra can say for Smaelaer now, say!"
The chamber was utterly silent, to no one's surprise. No one was about to gainsay Goffe in this, indeed, this opportunity to speak in the accused's behalf had never been taken in all the seasons of its existence stretching back beyond the memories of all those present. Bicce paused the customary length of time, and went on.
"Smaelaer, you are cnawannawiht. Your crimes are too many for it to be other. If you have say, say now." She sat.
Smaelaer looked around. None of the nervous panic at addressing a gathering that he had felt at the Banquet afflicted him now. He was calm, now that his course had been decided, and he spoke with a clear, steady voice. "I cnawannawiht. I see Waeccelang, talk with Waeccelang. I talk to oxagretes. I walk in Haunted Lands."
"But I great hunter. I walk in Haunted Lands only to hunt oxagrete. I hunt oxagrete only on Goffe's orders." Goffe sprang out of his seat, and told the guard in a low voice to take Smaelaer away. The Yldras stirred and mumbled to each other in confusion. Smaelaer kept talking.
"Goffe orders! He order oxagrete for Great Banquet because there no coecil!"
"That enough from you!" Goffe sputtered, red-faced. Then, to the guard again, "Get him out!"
"There no coecil for Great Banquet because there no kernals!"
Goffe turned to the buzzing Yldras and cried, "Cnawannawiht! Gemaed! He not say real things!" as Smaelaer was dragged toward the door.
"Kernal bins dryge! Kernal bins dryge! Traeppedelfere starve if Bazaar not soon!" Smaelaer shouted as he was pulled through the door.
"Blowanslaep!" Goffe screamed to the disappearing guard. "Now, now!"
The Yldramot was up in arms over this bombshell. Was this true? Some now remembered that they had missed eating coecil at the Banquet. Were the bins really dryge, as Smaelaer had claimed? There was only one way to find out; several Yldras, without so much as taking leave of the Maegenyldras, left the Yldramot Chamber to inspect the warehouses. Who was to blame? Everyone was talking at once, debating, hypothesizing, accusing. Whose responsibility was it, anyway? Goffe's, of course.
Goffe was buffeted in a storm of charges, and he spun first one way, then the other as he denied everything: that Smaelaer was cnawannawiht, you can't listen to him, he won't cause any more trouble, um, he ordered the oxagrete hunt, no, there was plenty of coecil but it wasn't needed with all the oxagrete (they had to grant him that).
When the party came back from the warehouses with the report that um, the kernal bins were dryge, all of them, Goffe was duly shocked: How could that be? Perhaps Bicce hadn't negotiated as favorable a trade last Bazaar as she had been bragging she had? Now Bicce's eyes flamed, and she practically leaped at Goffe's throat, and the excuses poured from her in equal measure to the accusations of everyone from Goffe and Cwidu on down to the millers and bakers, and even an implication that the Mocwalwians had stolen back wainloads of kernals right out of the warehouse!
The din that ensued was incredible, magnified as it was by the curvature of the room, as the Yldras slung epithets and excuses in all directions without taking aim. At last, one by one, they became aware of a lone figure in the bottom of the bowl, standing on a chair with his arms raised in the signal for silence. After a long gradual diminuendo, the exalted leaders of the race relaxed their grips on each other's throats and turned their attention to Cwidu, who waited patiently.
"Mocsaecs!" he chided them. "Yldras and fools! Who in caves starves?"
No one could think of any starving Traeppedelfere.
"How many among Yldras turned down oxagrete, and asked for coecil?"
Well, none.
"Who among Yldras did not fear Smaelaer as rival?"
All agreed he could be a powerful enemy.
"So!" Cwidu sneered, "no one hungers, we feast on oxagrete first time in lifetime, and great danger to Yldras and Yldramot is past, all by Maegenyldra Goffe. And you thank him by fight! By names! By trouble! Yldras, take seats, we have other matters to consider!" The Yldras every one were properly cowed by this tongue-lashing from a Maegenyldra, and obediently took their places, ready to plow through what remained of their agenda.
Goffe was grateful for this display of high solidarity by Cwidu, but Cwidu soon showed his true motivation. Stepping down from his chair, he leaned over to Goffe and whispered in his ear with unmistakable malice, "You, mocetan; you are mine!"
The roar of the Yldramot was audible even through the closed door as the guard hauled Smaelaer down the hall. He went along meekly, dazedly. Not far down the corridor they stopped and the guard knocked on a small door. An old face appeared as the door was lowered, telling them to enter.
The first thing Smaelaer noticed was that it was very hot in this room. Fyrstan lamps illuminated a long, narrow trough about both hands deep in the floor, a carven water channel along one wall, and a large furnace door (a thick round stone which could be rolled aside to reveal the furnace opening) against the opposite wall. Smaelaer heard the door lifted shut behind him, and he turned and saw the guard (still in the room) take a seat on a low bench beside the door. On the other side of the door was another low bench, and on it was seated the Wrencanmodor herself, Haegtesse, and with his back to the water trough in the wall was the figure who had admitted them, Leornian, the Giestranweard. Leornian instructed Smaelaer to lay on his back in the depression in the floor, with his head toward the furnace, and his feet toward the Giestranweard. When Smaelaer, with a curious glance at Haegtesse, had done this, Leornian spoke in a low voice:
"Traeppedelferes swim in waters of lifetimes. Traeppedelferes drink waters of caves. Traeppedelferes drown in waters of pleasure. Traeppedelferes born in waters of numbness. It is fitting that Traeppedelferes die in water, also. It is fitting that Traeppedelfere pass out of caves like the water, or remain in caves like the water, to become new Traeppedelfere, or become truhthalig, and so die not."
"So it is that Traeppedelfere awake first in water, and sleep last in water, and between is never fiscetan. For truhthalig not breathe, only drink water of Traeppedelfere birth and death."
"As birth follows pleasure, so it is fitting death follows pleasure." Leornian reached into the water trough in the wall behind him and drew out a dripping blowantreow fruit. "And it is fitting that Waeccelang, so long ago, gave Traeppedelfere gift of blowanslaep, to ease passage from Traeppedelfere to libbannawiht."
Smaelaer's eyes followed the fruit as Leornian passed it to the guard, who passed it on to Haegtesse, who then handed it down to him. Blowanslaep! The stories were of wonderful dreams, beautiful visions, warm comfort, enjoyed by those who ate of the powerful bulbs and told about the sensations in the brief time before they fell into the blowanslaep, never to awaken.
"Eat!" commanded Leornian. "It is good. May you once again walk as Traeppedelfere!"
Smaelaer bit into the sweet meat. The juice gushed into his mouth, and he found himself almost uncontrollably gulping, slurping and swallowing the delectible fruit. Nothing else mattered, he had to finish, had to finish... His eyes rolled back in his head as the lids slowly closed, and the luscious, rich sensation swept through him; a sudden sleep, no, not sleep exactly, but... floating! He was floating over the forest, over the mountains, far away; and there was the Waeccelang! motioning to him to come down, come down and join the body, his body, mercilessly rent by the oxagretes, lying there in the ravine. But Smaelaer knows better, and the floating feeling is so joyous, so happy: he looks away; he sails away, forever.
When Smaelaer's eyes closed, Leornian nodded to the guard, who then rose and diverted the flowing water into the depression. The paralyzed hunter was soon submerged, and the bubbles leaking from his mouth gradually ceased, and after a while the Wrencanmodor put her skilled hand on the body, and shook her head to Leornian.
Haegtesse's duties here now completed, she left the room.
Leornian indicated to the guard to proceed, and Leornian then followed Haegtesse out the door. The muscular guard rolled aside the furnace door, exposing a roaring hot fyrstan flame, and hoisted the limp body out of the water, and directly onto the slab inside the furnace. The wet body hissed and steamed on the glowing stone, and the little room was filled with the stench of singed hair and charred flesh before the guard could roll the door shut again.
After what seemed to the guard to be an eternity, he rolled the door open again, gathered up the powder left on the slab, cast it into the water in the depression, and drained it out. It eventually joined the water of the caves.
Haegtesse waited in the hall until the last of the Yldras had exited the Yldramot Chamber. It had been a marathon session; they were glad to get out. When the last one had filed down the corridor, the Wrencanmodor entered. The Maegenyldras were still in the bottom of the bowl; they were awaiting her report.
"Well, Haegtesse, how it go?" Bicce asked blandly.
"As always, as always. Easier than I think, after all you tell me about great hunter," she answered.
"Good. We can go," sighed Bicce.
"Wait!" said Goffe. "One thing else. Haegtesse, Smaelaer was cnawannawiht?"
"Oh, of course!" said Haegtesse slily.
"Then other fisccilds from same antunge also cnawannawiht!" said Goffe.
"No," said Haegtesse, "not much. Not unless from same twatunge also. Even then, maybe not."
"Well," Goffe went on, "were there any such fisccilds?"
Haegtesse thought a while, sorting through the whole tribe. "No. Wait! wait, um, there one. A cild, with hunter wellemodors." She looked at the Maegenyldras with a queer sort of suspicious glint in her eyes.
"We must watch this cild," said Goffe to his peers. "I want no more trouble like with Smaelaer."
"That trouble mostly your doing!" sniped Cwidu.
"I not order him to Haunted Lands!" shouted Goffe. "He go there alone."
"Quiet!" commanded Bicce. "I want to get out of Yldramot Chamber! Haegtesse, what name of this cild?"
"Um, what name?" asked both Goffe and Cwidu together.
Haegtesse thought for a moment, then seemed to reach a decision in her own mind, and her brow relaxed, and she smiled her crooked half-smile.
"Geoluscite," she said.
The door to the Yldramot Chamber thudded to behind them as they pulled it up together. The four old Traeppedelferes hobbled off to their own chambers to rest, or to prepare themselves for the upcoming Bazaar. The fyrstan lamps glowed and smoked and hissed. Far down the dark corridors, somewhere, the rumors of the forges fought the din of the mines to a strained draw, and their sharp attacks roared into the hallways, and the intermingled echoes caromed around the corners, and wrestled through the long passages, and spread through all the branching tunnels, filling the entire network of caves with the inextinguishable rumble of labor, of industry, of Traeppedelferean life.
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