Starlight, p.1
Starlight, page 1
Starlight
By Niall Teasdale
Copyright 2023 Niall Teasdale
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Contents
Prologue
Part One: Gifted
Interlude: The Lord and the Sorceress
Part Two: The Iron Lands
Part Three: The Land of Ice and Snow
Part Four: Kingdom of the Storm God
Epilogue
About the Author
Prologue
Grand Observatory, Mount Estellaris, 20th Day of Yoo in the 85th Year Postwar.
Night watch at the Grand Observatory atop Mount Estellaris was not popular in Yoo, the month of snow. It was cold enough to freeze your eyeballs in their sockets, especially on the good nights for observation when the sky was clear. No one liked doing it, except for Angfa.
Angfa had it down to something close to an art and enjoyed the solitude. He had personally – and very laboriously – sewed double-layered robes with extra long sleeves he could fold his arms into and a pocket for his feet. The other residents at the observatory had laughed at him, but they complained about the cold and that their toes were frigid, and Angfa sat atop the observation tower as snug as a bug in double-layered robes. He had obtained a special flask which kept hot drinks hot, so he had warming tea throughout the night. Basically, if he was going to do this, he was going to make sure he could survive it.
It was not an especially difficult job, when it came down to it, but a vital one. The patterns of stars in the sky were monitored constantly because changes in them could spell any manner of misfortune, or any manner of fortune. The Grand Observatory had been founded during the Romar Empire, thousands of years ago, and had been operating continuously since, always watching the changes in the night sky and documenting them for astrologers across the eight nations. To be honest, there had been no major changes for the last thousand years, but everything was noted down because the smallest alteration in the alignment of the stars could make a difference to someone.
The last big change was coming into view above the eastern horizon soon. The observatory did not exactly sit on the very top of the mountain, because the very top of the mountain was a lake. It was like the peak had been sliced off and a bowl scooped out, and then that bowl had filled with water. Some said that Mount Estellaris was a volcano; the shape, they said, was right. If it was, it had long since become dormant. There were no records of an eruption there, even in myth. The observatory sat on the lip of the bowl, on the western side, so the constellation associated with the god Rom would be rising over the other lip soon. Or rather not, because the last major change in the sky had been the disappearance of Rom’s constellation which was followed quickly by the fall of the despotic Romar Empire. One day, the stars in that group had started going out. Within a matter of days, there was nothing in that part of the sky except dark space.
Angfa looked to the east and waited for the dark spot to appear. He poured himself some tea and sipped it, feeling the warmth spread through his body. He let out a sigh. The night was almost half done. Did he have enough tea to cover the rest?
All thought of tea and warmth fled Angfa’s mind as the first of seven stars appeared over the lip of the caldera. Seven stars which should not have been there. Seven stars which had not been there for a thousand years. The constellation of Rom, God of Invention, was back in the sky, and it could mean almost anything, but none of those things were likely to be good.
All Angfa could think when he saw it was ‘Why me?’
Part One: Gifted
Shouchung, Cheol Uitang, 4th Day of Shonshi in the 103rd Year Postwar.
The farm about thirty li from Shouchung village was a little unusual for the area. The farmhouse had stone walls, and there was a stone wall around the yard surrounding it. Not a high wall, but something which would give pause to beasts and men attempting entry. The land around it belonging to the farmhouse was a little larger than most of the local farms too, but the farmer who lived there was not particularly wealthy. The land had been granted to the family for services rendered along with something else which had held far more value at the time. The man who had been granted that land, the father of the current owner, had been a warrior before he became a farmer, hence the desire for solid walls.
The farmer lived with his daughter, his wife having died when the child was only three. His father had been a little disappointed that his son had preferred tending the fields to learning the combat art which had earned them those fields, but he had not pushed. When the woman of the house, the only one after the death of a beloved wife, had shown an interest in learning about swords, fists, and polearms, the old man had taught her, but she still saw to the needs of the household in more traditional manners. And today that meant…
‘I’m off to the village for groceries,’ Ai called out as she opened the kitchen door.
Her father, Myeong, nodded from the kitchen table. ‘I’ll be out sowing the northeast field by the time you get back. Take care.’
‘Don’t I always?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose you do.’
Smiling, Ai left the house and then the yard through the gate, which was never closed during the day, and set out on the walk to Shouchung. She walked along a cart track through their own fields for thirty li before that joined a slightly wider, more worn cart track which made straight for the village, passing between a number of other smallholdings on the way. She passed a couple of people as she went, some coming out from the village, others going in. She was a fast walker with excellent stamina; outpacing those going the same way was trivial for her, and she had no desire to talk to most of them.
Shouchung existed entirely for the purpose of serving the farms surrounding it. It was possible that some of the residents did not think that way, but it was the truth. If you included the surrounding farms, there were about two hundred and eighty people living there, so it was not particularly large. The village had a smith, who mostly repaired farming implements, a tavern, which was basically a taproom with a side line in cooking, and a couple of stores which provided for the populace in terms of food they could not grow and goods they could not make. There was also a mill, powered by the wind, on the north side of town. Wheat was grown more than rice in this part of the country, and the mill provided flour to the locals.
There was neither wall nor fence around the village. Most of the buildings were made of wood. None were taller than a single storey. The smithy had some stone where the work was done, but the rest of the building was wood. The chimney for the forge was the tallest structure in the village. A river ran through the middle of the village in a stone-lined channel which kept it under control. It was bridged in several places by wooden planks and in one by a stone span, allowing carts to pass along the main road. The main road was little more than a cart track with pretentions for something greater. It was not the most attractive village in Cheol Uitang. Visitors did not stop there for the scenery. The buildings were rough and ready, but the surrounding farmland made up for that a little. You could get better views in many other places with better facilities. If you wanted eggs and flour, however, it was a perfectly good place to go looking.
Ai walked in from the north side of the village and headed straight for Mrs Mun’s grocery store. It had no signage to indicate its purpose. You just had to know that this building sold eggs from those farms with chickens and flour from the mill. It sold other things, of course. Vegetables could be bought there, generally surplus from the local farms. The meat was generally from birds, often hunted by the one or two men in the village who made their living in that way. The quality was variable, and the quantity tended to be spotty. There were a couple of pheasants hanging up near the door today; Ai stopped to look them over, watched all the while by the eagle eyes of Mrs Mun.
‘Will you be buying,’ Mrs Mun said after a few seconds, ‘or just cooking them with your stare?’
‘It’s too early in the season,’ Ai replied. ‘They’re scrawny. I’ll stick with eggs and flour for today.’ Ai’s demeanour was cheerful, even if Mrs Mun looked at her like she was about to steal the silverware. Not that it was likely that Mrs Mun had any silver anythings anywhere on her property.
‘Hmph.’
‘A dozen eggs, two bags of flour.’
‘You know where they are.’
Ai did not let Mrs Mun’s attitude get to her because she was used to it. It was hardly just Mrs Mun who was that way. It came down to the way Ai looked and that, despite having a Cheol Uitang name, she would never be considered a Cheol Uitang citizen by the majority of those who lived there. Or anywhere else for that matter.
If you ignored local prejudice, Ai was a beautiful young woman. She had turned eighteen not long ago, but no one in the village was interested in taking her hand, even if one or two of the younger men had suggested they might like to take something else. She had jet-black hair and eyes which matched. She was not an entirely pure-blooded Romar, so her eyes had a hint of the narrowing on the inside edges which typified Cheol Uitang people. Her face was generally quite rounded, but it came to a point at her chin and her cheeks were narrow. She had a fairly short, fairly flat, pleasingly shaped nose, and very full lips with a pouting quality. She was not at all tall, being not much more than eight chi in height, but she was taller than Mrs Mun, which seemed to displease the woman. Ai also had a bigger bust than the grocer, though she could have lived without that. She felt it broke the rather smooth lines of her body which came with firm muscle hidden away under tanned skin. It was her dark colouration and her eyes which gave her away as a Romar. No one particularly liked the Romar. If they had, combined with her likely inheritance of one of the largest farms in town, she would have been up to her throat in suitors.
‘That’ll be eight chian,’ Mrs Mun said when Ai stepped over with her goods to pay.
‘That’s more outrageous than usual, Mrs Mun. Three. Just like you’d charge everyone else.’
‘Hmph. Three then.’
Ai took a string of coins from her basket. Each was a disc with a central hole, about as wide as a man’s thumb and stamped around the hole with characters declaring that it was an official coin of Cheol Uitang. This was a chian. Ai unknotted the string, lifted off three of the coins, re-formed the knot, and then handed the money over to the disgruntled grocer. ‘Thank you, Mrs Mun. I’ll see you again soon.’
‘Don’t come back on my account.’
Ai and her father had an additional source of dislike among the villagers. Ai’s grandfather had been a bodyguard to the local lord, a slave like most Romar. He had won his freedom and the grant of land upon which he had built his home. Free Romar were not usual. People did not know what to do with them, so they tended to go with general intolerance. Even free Romar tended to have fewer rights than Cheol Uitang natives.
The one place Ai could guarantee that she would not see such prejudice was the smithy, which was her next stop. Gang Yun, the smith, had a Romar slave helping him around the smithy, but Yun treated him well enough, and was generally of the opinion that everyone was to be shown equal respect provided they had the coin to pay for it. He was a gruff man of middle years with not a hair on his head. He had, apparently, once grown a thick beard, but that had been cut off and never grown back following an incident with cinders from the forge. He had muscles you could bounce chian off.
‘You’ll be wanting that hoe,’ he said on seeing Ai. ‘It’s ready. Kyung, fetch Mr Guan’s hoe.’
Kyung was the slave. He was a little older than Ai, but not old enough that he did not look at her with lustful eyes whenever she walked into the smithy. Part of it was that Ai wore an outfit which let her move freely and was, she thought, elegant. Her tunic buttoned down the left breast and was long-sleeved. It stopped well short of her skirt, which was ankle-length but held together on the left hip by red cord, leaving a split all the way down. Her shoes were basically leather panels tied around her feet with thongs. There was a fair bit of flesh on show, but that was not uncommon for young women, and the split skirt worked with her martial arts style which was… dynamic.
‘Stop drooling and get the hoe, Kyung!’ Yun had to break the slave’s reverie with a shout. Kyung hurried off into the back of the shop like a scuttling beetle. ‘I swear the boy’s never seen breasts in his life.’
‘I don’t mind. No one else in town looks at me like that.’
‘Idiots. You’re a good-looking girl to anyone with eyes. You’re going to be a wealthy one when you inherit that farm. They’re all so concerned about your heritage that they don’t realise you’ll end up finding another Romar to marry, and then they’ll have missed their chance to take the place back for Cheol Uitang.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a nice way of putting it, but okay.’
‘Of course, you lot are long-lived, so they’ve got some time to realise their mistake.’
‘That,’ Ai said, ‘assumes I’d take any of them.’
‘Hm… Well, none of them deserve you. You hold out for a nice Romar boy.’
Ai gave a sigh. ‘Like that’s likely to happen…’
5th Day of Shonshi.
Ai was standing in the yard outside the farmhouse, a sword in her hand and her eyes closed. When she felt she was ready, she began to move. Her motions were precise, sweeping, broken by pauses where she held her position for a second before moving on to the next stance. This was the formal dance of the Romar Battle Form her grandfather had taught her, a sequence of combat moves strung together into a stylised, slowed-down pattern of efficient strikes and parries. The aim was precision. Every motion had to flow perfectly, every pause had to have the precise posture dictated by the style. It ended after several minutes with a slow lunge piercing the heart of an imagined opponent, and Ai smiled. She was not yet as good as her grandfather, but she was good. Very good.
‘Skill in combat is a matter of muscle memory,’ her grandfather had told her. ‘Repeating the forms until they are part of your body, that is how you will become a great warrior, Ai.’
Now, happy with that exercise, she proceeded to the next. The motions were the same, but they were carried out at a much higher speed. The precision was not quite so great, but the intent was to kill and avoid being killed. Now, if someone had been opposing her, there would have been harm. This time, when she got to the end of the sequence, she continued, repeating it again, but this time with added flourishes. She kicked off the ground to swing both legs at an opponent’s head. She incorporated acrobatic dodges, ducking under imagined weapons and springing up to avoid others. These moves were her own, not part of the Romar Battle Form.
‘Warriors innovate,’ her grandfather had said. ‘Once you learn the basic forms, once you are an expert in them, then you make them your own. Do not be afraid to make the style your own. That is after you understand the basics and your body knows them better than you do.’
Her grandfather had been a master of the Romar Battle Form. Even the loss of his right arm had not stopped him, though it had made him less useful as a bodyguard. He had lost his arm to the bite of a shadow wolf while saving the life of the local lord’s three-year-old son. The wound had not been too bad, but shadow wolf bites carried with them a dark corruption which, left unchecked, could consume your entire body. The arm had been the price of survival. Granting his slave bodyguard freedom and land had not been something the lord had to do, but it appeared magnanimous and generous, and it removed the need to care for a servant who could no longer adequately fulfil his role. Gyuanyu Guan was by no means a weakling without his right arm, however, and he had been an excellent teacher when Ai had decided that she wished to learn to fight.
‘I can teach you, young lady,’ he had said, ‘but it will be hard.’
That had been on her fifth birthday. Her grandfather had taught her all he could in the six years he had lived after that. She had been learning with his voice a constant tutor in her mind ever since. She was better now than she had been when he had last given his opinion, she was sure of that, but she wished the old man could pass one more judgement.
Breathing hard after her exertions, Ai came to a stop and closed her eyes. Her grandfather smiled at her behind her eyelids. She smiled back.
8th Day of Shonshi.
For once, Mrs Mun was not being vindictive, but that was because she had gossip. ‘Strangers,’ she said. ‘There have been strangers in the village. Asking questions, they were.’
‘Questions about what?’ Ai asked.
‘About the Romar in the village, that’s what. Seems they went to the smithy and talked to Gang about that boy he’s got.’
‘Kyung.’
‘Whatever. Seems they asked the boy’s birthday. One of them was an astrologer. Well, she looked like an astrologer, but not like any I’ve seen before.’
‘So, they weren’t from Cheol Uitang?’
