Shadri's Third Tale

Shadri’s Third Tale1

© 1996 by eric lee2

The people of Khavra were not happy.3

Shadri thought he could almost smell the sadness as he and Larhin came into the village, tired and covered with dust. It had been a long road and dry from the last village. Khavra was not a place that Larhin visited often, for the people were content and self-sufficient in their little valley, and seldom had contact with those outside. 4

In Ganean, though, they had heard from a wandering peddler of the troubles there. Larhin said that troubles were made to be met, and the meeting of them was a part of the responsibility of having the power. They bought extra water bottles for the trip, for there was a desert between, and left for Khavra that very day.5

They were two days getting over the range of hills that held the Ganean Valley, and another two in crossing the stretch of desert that lay between Khavra and the seas. They crossed the desert by night, hiding from the sun by day so their skins would not dry out and begin to lose scales. It took a long time to grow scales, and until they grew back, the only time they didn’t itch was when they hurt. 6

He asked Larhin how Khavra had come to be so far from the sea, and why anyone looking for a place to live would start out across such a deadly wasteland in the first place, but Larhin could only shrug his frilled shoulders and say it was long ago, and who could know? It was plain that he had never wondered. Why Larhin was not more curious about things was one of the things Shadri often wondered about.7

They pushed hard the second night. Before sunrise they left the desert behind and began climbing the high pass into the hills. Khavra sat in a river valley high in the hills on that side of the waste, where two streams joined with the river, making the little valley green and very beautiful. From the pass he could see how the village was dotted with pools and springs. It sat around the shores of a fair lake, which shone like a large jewel set about with smaller stones in the morning sun.8

They passed through the village slowly about half way through morning, and Shadri was surprised at the number of craftsmen in the village. He began to see what Larhin had meant by ‘self-sufficient’. With this many skills in one village, and the farms he had seen as they entered the valley, these people would not have to trade for anything they needed, and probably very little that they wanted. 9

They should have been happy, he thought, but everyone he saw seemed sad, and they walked with their heads drooping, ambling about as if not going anywhere in particular. 10

Larhin and Shadri set up camp on the far side of the village as always. The wagon’s slow progress through town was all that was needed to let everyone know that a spell-maker was in town. Larhin had Shadri go to sleep in the wagon as soon as camp was made. Tomorrow was soon enough to set up the stage, since they had walked all night and most of the day to get here.11

He slept all night, waking when the sun first began to peek over the low hills east of the village. Quietly, he set about the mornings chores, and had a fire and breakfast ready when Larhin rolled out of his blankets remarking on how good the food smelled.12

Together, they began to set up the stage, and it was not long after that people began to arrive. Oddly, though, no one came up to speak with them. They just gathered nearby, talking to each other and pointing at Larhin and Shadri sometimes. It was very curious. Usually, people would be asking them questions about the show, or asking Shadri if Larhin were a real spell-maker. Some would have brought ailments or injuries to be cured, and indeed, one of them was limping, but no one approached.13

At last, when the stage had been erected and the banner was hung over it, Larhin retired into the little curtained room at the side, where he spoke privately to people. Then the people gathered there parted, and from the middle of them came one of obvious wealth, wearing the medal around his neck that meant he was the village leader. He entered the private little room, and the other folk drifted farther away, but stayed in a tight little group and kept staring.14

Shadri thought all this very odd, and he would have asked them what was wrong, but moving away had made it clear that they did not want to talk to him. That was when he noticed that there were no children in the group. Children always came to see a spell-maker! They always gathered around Shadri, asking how he had become an apprentice and what it was like. He was more puzzled than ever.15

Curious as he was, he would very much have liked to hear what was being said in that private room. Of course, it would have been very bad manners to listen, but he wished he could, anyway. He was beginning to think that things here were more wrong than they could have guessed!16

Larhin and his guest stayed for a long time there, and Shadri became bored after a while. He decided to see the town, and set out walking back the way they had come.17

The first place he stopped was, of course, at a sweet-maker’s shop. He bought a favorite of his, made of nuts and dried fruits stuck together with a sticky-sweet syrup and covered with powdered nut-meal, and wandered on up the street nibbling on it, looking around him. Every place he looked, there were all the things that should be there. The shops were open, and people were shopping in them but they all seemed to have their minds elsewhere. They walked to places as if going nowhere in particular, almost finding the place they were going as if by accident. 18

Finally, Shadri arrived at the place he recalled from their passage through town. It was a small park made around a spring-fed pool of water, with slides of mud and wet grass; just the kind of place children loved to play. Here, finally, he found children.19

They were not playing very loudly, nor very hard, but they were playing a bit. Half-hearted swoops down the slides into the water were made quietly, and met with no whoops and cries from those watching. Shadri was more puzzled, now, and he hadn’t really thought he could be. There were grown-ups around the park, watching the children intently, as if afraid they would vanish any moment.20

Shadri saw one boy, sitting in the sun and drying a little apart from the others. The boy was older, with most of his baby-scales gone, and Shadri thought he would know enough to have some idea of what was happening. But when he approached, one of the grown-ups called to the boy and he got up and walked away from Shadri without looking back. As Shadri looked at the adult, he saw that she was looking at him with something very like anger, and maybe even fear. 21

He rippled the frill on his shoulders, a bit hurt by her attitude, and walked away. When he rounded the next corner in the lane, though, there were several young ones waiting for him. They were all older children, either apprentices in some craft or still under the search, and the looks they gave him were far from friendly. The biggest one stepped forward until he and Shadri were nearly touching noses, and said,22

“You came in with the spell-maker. We saw you yesterday.” Shadri didn’t see any need to answer that, but he nodded as he took another bite of his sweet. To his surprise, the boy hit his hand, knocking the rest of his sweet to the ground, and pressed forward until their chests were touching. His frill was flaring now in challenge. “We don’t want no more spell-makers here. We know what you do, all of you. You go back to your master, and you tell him we want you to leave, or we’ll...”23

That was as far as he got, for an older man had grabbed by the back of his frill and pulled him away, saying,24

“What do you want to do, you young idiot? We don’t have trouble enough? You go back in the shop, and if you don’t have enough to do, I’ll find you something, I will, and you won’t like it!” Without a word to Shadri, he turned and pushed the young bully toward the wood-worker shop on the corner. The rest of the youths had scattered when he appeared. Shadri was breathing hard, for he had been a little afraid, and his own frill had come halfway up. Taking a deep breath and forcing it to lie flat on his shoulders, he said,25

“Master Wood-worker, what is wrong in this town? We only came because we heard of troubles, and my master always helps people with problems. Why do you hate spell-makers?”26

The wood-worker gave his boy a final shove and turned. His frill was stiff, as if it wanted to rise and he was holding it down. He opened his mouth to say something, and his eyes darted toward the eastern hills with an almost panicky look. He swallowed the words he had been about to say, and the look on his face said that they hadn’t tasted very good. With a silent glare, he turned and followed his apprentice.27

Shadri began to retrace his steps toward where they had camped. He was a bit angry. Being afraid will do that, and he realized that he had been a little afraid of the angry bunch of boys. He had never really been in a fight, and he was fairly sure that they would have hurt him pretty badly, if they had started to beat him as they had clearly intended. He had also lost his sweet, and he hadn’t more than half finished with it.28

He thought then about the sweet-maker, who had sold him the treat with a smile and a friendly word. He hadn’t seemed afraid, or angry, and he was the only one Shadri had seen in all of Khavra who had not. When he reached the shop, he went inside again.29

“Back so soon?” The voice was as cheerful as he remembered. “You ought not have more sweets before lunch, my young friend.”30

“You’re right,” Shadri told him, “but I never finished it. Some boys were angry, and knocked it on the ground. I just wanted to ask you what everyone is so afraid of, if you don’t mind, sir.” Shadri was always as polite as he knew how to be, because people were generally nicer in return.31

“Ahh, well, as to that, I guess your master is hearing all about it from the mayor right now. Here, have a glass of fruit juice with me, and I will try to explain.”32

It had begun about a year ago. 33

No one, it seemed, had seen the spell-maker come into the valley. One day, he was just there. He had set up his camp in a park in the middle of town, against all custom, and he didn’t make a show, or ask for people to come with their problems. Instead, he had told the people that he had decided to make Khavra his home. The mayor had objected: Everyone knew that spell-makers were supposed to travel from town to town, because there weren’t many of them, and it wasn’t right for one place to always have one. Spell-makers were supposed to help everyone.34

This spell-maker, whose name was Gorbii, said that the rules were changed for Khavra, and they ought to be grateful, since no one wanted to cross the waste to come here. Then he told them exactly how grateful he expected them to be. He wanted a tenth of the profit that everyone in the valley made, or he would dry up all the springs and streams, and the river would run dry, and they would all have to move back across the waste.35

“Now, the way he said it, my friend, it was like they would all dry up on their own, and he was doing us a service by keeping the water running, but we all knew what he really meant. Have some more juice.”36

Shadri took the drink gratefully, for the story he was hearing had made his mouth go as dry as any dead spring. The people had grumbled about the spell-maker’s demands, of course, but after one or two of the towns springs and wells had dried up, and the river had shrunk to half its size within its banks, they had agreed to pay what Gorbii demanded. Of course, it hadn’t stopped there.37

Whenever Gorbii came into town, he took whatever he wanted, and never paid for it. Shadri wondered what he had wanted the money for, if he was never going to spend any of it. The people began to grumble again. If Gorbii were going to get all this, soon he would have collected all the money within the valley, and they would have to trade outside all the time, just to make more money for Gorbii. They began to gather in larger groups, and to grumble more loudly.38

That was when the children began to vanish.39

Gorbii said that a great beast had come to live in the eastern hills, but that he had no time to deal with it, because all his time was taken up dealing with stubborn townsfolk who would not pay their share of what he had coming. He made it a rule, then, that no one could leave the valley, and no one was to talk with the traders who came about anything but trade. The people were less happy than ever, but every time they began to grumble too loudly, the beast no one had ever seen would return, and a child or two would vanish.40

“This is why they are angry and afraid, you see. They don’t know if your master will help, or can help. He may only anger Gorbii. He may only join with him. And, if he is here to help, well, why did he take so very long to get here, eh?”41

After Shadri had thanked the sweet-maker for the juice, and for talking to him, he went directly back to Larhin. He had a lot to think about. He still didn’t really understand why the people treated him as they had. Just because one spell-maker had gone somehow wrong did not mean they all had, after all. But he could see how being afraid could make a person angry, since he had just seen how it had done that to him.42

When he arrived, Larhin was saying good-bye to the mayor, and looking very grave, indeed. He motioned Shadri inside without a word, and joined him after a moment. 43

“Shadri, we have something to do, and I will need you to lend me your strength to do it. Here, I will show you the shapes we must join, but you will have to make them, for you are much stronger in the p’taa than I will ever be, and this will not be an easy thing.”44

That is when Shadri learned his first shapes of the fourth level. Under Larhin’s watchful eye, he compounded shapes from all the first four levels, until they had joined to become a thing that was almost alive. It was a beautiful thing, a creature not really living, but seeming so, and so delicate and feminine and lovely that he gave it the name of the spring flower that only blooms for a day, and then is gone. He called it Illurra.45

Then, as Larhin directed him, he fed it images to follow, and sent it on its way. This was a problem that was quite beyond both Larhin’s power and his authority: It would require one of the P’taa Anaath, the Masters of the Power. The thing they had just made was both message and messenger, and now they had only to wait until a Master had come. 46

Larhin told Shadri it would be better if he would stay here until it was all settled. Shadri was partly disappointed, and partly relieved to hear this. He had never seen a battle of the power, nor ever seen one of the Masters. He wasn’t sure that he knew anyone but Larhin who ever had. He was not sure what he was feeling, but a large part of it was nervousness. He did as Larhin told him, and stayed at the camp, so he never saw the Master, nor Gorbii, and he never knew what happened between them.47

But he knew when it was over, for Larhin came down from the eastern hills, leading a band of children. They were dirty and had not been well fed, and most of them were still very afraid, but they were all there, every child that had vanished while Gorbii was in the valley. The people of Khavra were happy again.48

The wood-worker’s apprentice, who had struck Shadri and knocked his sweet on the ground, found him that evening and said he was sorry. He introduced Shadri to his little sister, who had been one of the first children to vanish. Shadri understood, now, why the boy had felt as he did. Shadri had a little sister, too, and he missed her a lot, though no one had taken her away.49

Later, when the show was over and Shadri was in his blankets, he thought back over all that had happened. He knew he had learned something, but he thought he would be a long time putting it into words. Part of it, he knew, was about how easily fear turns to anger, and about how the need to do something could make you do the wrong thing, if you were not very careful what you did. But there was a lot more to it than that, and he thought he would not understand it all for a very long time.50

And he was quite right, too.51