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The Lay of the Grandmasters Way
by Pyewacket
Act 5 The Lay of Nerala. Part II.
She was a simple child. Thats what they said of her, in their grunting language. Fit for cooking, if she were watched over.
But even this task was thought to be beyond her, when she burnt down her father's hut, allowing the meat to burn to cinders and the straw matted floor to catch light, while she stood staring at the dancing flames, as if transfixed; like a rabbit will stare into the eyes of a snake about to strike.
She was chided and beaten for her negligence, and since these were orchan folks, the beatings were brutal in the extreme.
Yet from the time of the fire, all in the village were wary of her, and even her father and mother were afraid of her, despite being the ones to inflict her punishments. For she had walked unscathed from out of the burning hut, even though the village warriors themselves were unable to get even close enough to douse the flames with their buckets of swamp and marsh water. Not the walk of one who flinches and fears the touch of flame, but the sure and steady step of one who has walked out this same path all her childhood days and does not notice the wall of flame she is passing through.
The village Shaman declared her as unfit to follow his ways, being unable to comprehend the simplest of bone castings. He watched in angered astonishment as she buried the bones and placed a sprig of Ivy on the small mound, as if she were burying a kin.
But being orchan and a part of the village, she was tended to and fed and allowed to live with them, for the laws of the tribe decreed it. Only the murder of one of their own would allow exclusion from the tribe, and if the murder were of a child, then the exclusion would be from life as well as the tribe.
So she was taught simpler tasks. Gathering herbs, wood or various root vegetables seemed to be within her limited capacity of understanding, although she outright refused to go anywhere near a pumpkin, even beatings failed to cure her of this wayward and unorchan-like fear. Something about them simply made her recoil in loathing, screeching terror, much to the delight and entertainment of the younger male orchans in the village.
And thus it was that she was accepted, if somewhat uncomfortably, into village life, and her contribution to the village stores of herbs was recognized alongside that of the other hunter-gatherers in the tribe as being equal, despite the fact that occasionally there were odd plants she had gathered that had no use or value to the villagers. The gnarly-toothed old herbdrier who took them from Nerala simply patted her on the hands and smiled encouragement to the "simple one".
It was a small number of years later in passing, that the fire-fever hit the village. The shaman claimed it had been brought down upon them by Mortos, who was angered that his usual tributes were slackening of late. The warriors themselves muttered darkly about some of the herbs the kid-head had put in for the broth. The old herb drier, a dwarfish slave who had won her right to live amongst the orchan village through right of combat, knew for certain that no herbs of ill effect were to blame, instead thought that some of the meat that had been brought into the stores had been tainted somehow, perhaps by wild magic from the swamps.
Whatever the reason was for it though, the fire-fever was swift in laying hold of half of the orchan inhabitants in a matter of only a few days.
Nerala's own mother was struck down with it and writhed in extreme agony as her internal temperature soared, and cooked her organs from within, slowly but with inevitable certainty to the point where she would die without intervention of some kind.
It was then that Nerala went to the old herbdrier, and asked for her plants back.
Not quite understanding, the herbdrier was grabbed forcibly by the hand then, and dragged around to the store hut, with Nerala saying the word plants over and over again.
Once inside, Nerala quickly ran amongst the hanging and fragrant dried bunches of flowers and herbs, stopping here and there as she found those odd few things she had added but had no apparent value or use. Who, for instance, would associate a snapdragon with anything even remotely useful?
Yet these flowers and herbs Nerala gathered in from the store hut's beams and baskets, her intense child-like face a mask of concentration on her task, so much so she knocked over the store hut's heather besom in her haste. Shaking with shock that she had done wrong, as the clang of the wooden handle boomed around the hut, she stopped instantly on the spot, until the old dwarf patted her once more on the hand and smiled her encouraging smile. It was like a gnome-switch in her head suddenly turned her on again, and Nerala reanimated once more, this time taking the gathered flotsam outside to the water hole.
Stooping low, she dumped her bundles beside the village bucket, used for pulling water up manually from the waterhole, and began grinding the flowers and herbs into the bucket itself, crushing them mercilessly into the inner base.
The old dwarf looked on in vague amusement, as, apparently satisfied, Nerala lowered the bucket hand over hand into the waterhole, then drew the bucket back out again, now dripping wet. Nerala then spun quickly and snatched the herbdrier's knife that was hanging from its aged leather thong around the dwarfs waist, and she cut the rope on the bucket handle.
The water dripping constantly from the various small leaks and cracks in the bucket, Nerala then ran fast amongst the huts, first to her home and inside, then out again to the other huts in the village, each in turn. And as she went, from the first to the last, the water each time she appeared was steaming forth vapours and fumes, in ever greater abundance after each hut.
The Shaman came then, demanding to know what magic this was that was being done without his consent, and threatened to knock the bucket out of Nerala's hand. But the hand he raised to do so fell to the floor unused, as Nerala continued silently on her way from hut to hut again, with vapours streaming and the Shaman's blood dripping from the knife she still held.
The screams of the Shaman brought those warriors still able-bodied, quickly into the village clearing, and they discovered not only the now livid and one handed orchan Shaman clutching his stump in incomprehensible rage, but also emerging villagers from the nearby huts.
Villagers whom this morning had been on their deathbeds.
And that crazy kid-head running around with a bucket of fire and a bloodied knife!?
It took several days of deliberations for the village Elders to decide the fate of Nerala, after this. Whilst on the one hand, or lack of, there was the attack on the Shaman, an unforgivable sin against the Gods, on the other hand there was the fact that Nerala seemed to have single-handedly cured the fire-fever, with the only loss (apart from the hand, of course) being the now burnt and charred remains of the waterhole bucket.
These deliberations were themselves interrupted three times in total.
The first time was, predictably, by the Shaman himself. As was his right, he entered the Elder's hut without awaiting admittance or permission, for he was answerable to the Gods, according to his ways, as were they all. In an almost screaming voice, he denounced Nerala's cure before the Elders, and claimed the credit to himself, for was it not the sacrifice of his own flesh that had appeased Mortos the Almighty One?
The "simple one" should also be offered up as a sacrifice, he exclaimed, for Mortos would not take kindly to her attack on those Chosen to do His Will on Draia. Expecting overwhelming support from amongst the superstitious Elders, he was beside himself with rage when the Elders themselves dismissed him to continue their counsels. But the Elders themselves were somewhat surprised at this openly declared worship of The Decayed One. In spite of the allegiance they held to Glydoc, they still held to the old customs of offering tributes to the "lesser" gods, as an appeasement rather than a sign of worship, and it being at end of Fruitfall, and the days of Mortia close upon them, they were now somewhat suspicious of the Shamans prior enthusiasms in arranging Mortos's tithe.
Perhaps, they deliberated, it was by Glydoc's will that the Shaman had suffered his loss, for being untrue to his faith? Whatever the reasons, the Shaman was spitting with anger once more as he stormed from the hut, with thunderous brow and furious step, even the stalwart warrior guards, true of faith and heart as always, would not dare meet his gaze. For though he was injured, he was Shaman still, and no lessening of his powers could they perceive in his stride.
It was as he left that the second and perhaps most innocuous interruption occurred. It was the old herbdrier, having sought permission and been granted it by the Elders, since she was under right of witness, according to the Tribal laws, whom now stood before them. Speaking in a low voice, so low in fact that the warrior-guards outside the hut could not hear what was said, she told the Elders of Nerala's cure. How, years before her capture and indenture into servitude to the orchans, she had known of the magics of herbs and powers of powders, moreso when they were mixed in certain quantities with various ingredients to produce "medicines and spells, even fire itself". At first the Elders were somewhat disinclined to listen to old Ursul, as she stood and told them tales of "Alchemy" but slowly they discerned that the things she said made sense, despite the obvious difficulties inherently involved when discussing matters that were wholly alien to them. For these were proud warriors, and beyond the healing properties of certain herbs or the improvement of taste when used in cooking, they knew nothing of these supposed magics of mixing and grinding powders in a mortar.
These flowers and herbs had mixed together to create a combination of the essence of fire, and a special catalyst (the dwarf woman had some difficulty explaining this part to them) was used that inversed the essence, drawing heat into the water in the bucket. What this catalyst was, the old herbdrier did not know, for it did not appear to be amongst the flowers and herbs that Nerala had used. The sulfurous properties of the water, however, was a part of the ingredients, it being from an underground stream that ran down from the distant hills where sulfur must apparently be abundant. These are magics, she said, that are handed down from generation to generation amongst other races, through all Time.
Such was the wisdom that the dwarf woman spoke, that the Elders summoned Nerala before them, to ask her directly what this catalyst was that she had used to pull the fire from the sick For with this knowledge, the village would quickly gain power amongst their enemies, having a bargaining chip that would pave the way to unrivaled strength in both trade and war.
When she replied that it just came to her, the Elders quickly became angered by her apparent flippancy over such an important matter, mistakenly assuming that her reply referred to the cure coming to her somehow, as if in a dream-trance, for all knew she often appeared to be in a trance-like state. Privately, this trance-state had been thought by many of the orchan villagers to be yet another source of reviling by the Shaman, who himself used this method to appear in close connection with Mortos on occasion (but apparently only when there were someone around to observe him).
Nerala was saved from the wrath of the Elders, however, by the third and most undecidedly final interruption to the Elders moot.
That was when the ground shook and fire rained from the sky.
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