#45 - Language Unworthy of the Veil

The winter had been a Goddess’s blessing, though the snow was heavy.  It had stayed warm enough to snow, and snow a great deal, and there had only been two or three storms this season.  Only one of those had been what anyone would call a blizzard and that had been early on before there was enough snow to drift up high.

It had fallen, steady, thick and deep, burying and protecting the earth and the plants, insulating from killing cold. If it melted slowly in spring, the deep water aquifers would be replenished instead of tearing flash floods ripping grass, trees and mud away.  Fortunately Innéthel was only in high hills, or howes,  at the navigation head of the river, rather than sitting under a mountain that would shed avalanches, though the Yhom had their sound cannon to shake anything loose before it got too deep or too deadly.

The path to the Veil Falls led up and around the hill, rising slightly as it went and James’s boots squeaked on the hard-packed snow path, shoveled drifts as high as his waist in places as he walked.  The Goddess tree loomed stark and leafless now, but the lower branches and up as high as youngsters could climb, empty cages hung, symbolic of freedom, doors clicking in the wind.  Ribbons fluttered, some washed pale by long exposure, some bright, depending on the prayers people had to give.  This time of year there were no flowers but people made up fir cones with fat and seed so it was full of birds, endlessly cheeping.  It gave him a kind of satisfaction that the birds flittering about would often land on the empty cages since everyone knew that was how they’d originally arrived.

Grey birds, brown birds with white flashes, birds with their top half slate grey with white bellies.  Even some big bright blue bullies with flashy black and white slashings and regal blue topknots.  Chickadees.  All the winter birds.  Crows muttering the very top of the tree as well as their larger Raven relatives.  Only in the spring and summer would there be the brighter birds, enough jewel bright humming birds to rival the drone of bees everywhere, the indigos and yellow blacks, the orange and black fruit eaters.  For a moment he felt a slight touch of vertigo as if he could see both images one superimposed on the other.  He shook his head and it settled back down to reality. For now it was winter birds, mostly dressed in grey and white and black.

He tucked the broadsheet , warm off the press, tighter under his arm, heedless of the ink.  His greatcoat was black wool and wouldn’t show it.  His cane swung out almost jauntily but dug into the snow with purpose to give him a boost up the slippery hill.

An acolyte in their white winter robes and wool stockings paused in her grooming of the path and he touched the rim of his high fur felted hat to her.  She set the tamper and broom down and set her mittened hands together and bowed him over the lip of the hill and down into the valley itself.

From the top of the path he could see the vague movements of a half dozen priestesses or priests of Liryen, hard to see in the snow when they were all wearing their winter vestments.  He paused a moment just to see them working on the winter garden of the Veil.  It was immensely soothing and he found himself heartily glad that he had this and Aeono’s enclosed temple both together as this other world, this Empire, did not.

He couldn’t see Rutaçyen, Pelahir, or Ahrimaz but he wasn't expecting it, since they were likely down next the pool. He adjusted his folded up broadsheet once more and began his descent to where the waterfall ran.

The cliff edge to his left, in the summer, was a wall of mint that hundreds of tiny trickles of water flowed through before joining together to make the beginnings of the river.  This time of year it was a fantasy of icicles of a rainbow of colours.  Clear, blue, green, brown, a silvery one, One that seemed to be crystal clear with flecks of gold.

He could hear the rushing of the waterfall even now because unless the cold got bad enough to freeze the river solid, water ran out from underneath the skin of ice and over the crescent edge.  In the icy grotto that the waterfall pool became he could see the three men he was looking for.

As he came up to them, Pelahir rose and offered him the peculiar Cylak hello, an upward jerk of chin.  “Greetings, gentlemen."  Ahrimaz and Rutaçyen stayed cross-legged and Pel settled back down into the hollow in the snow that he seemed to have melted.  In fact he could feel the heat pouring off the three of them from where he stood.  “Hello, Warmaster.” He acknowledged her with a hat tip and she nodded back.

“Hello, student.  You come in good time.”

“Hello, Teel,” Ahrimaz said quietly.  “I hope you’re ready to continue our bet in a moment.”

“Indeed I am.  But I brought the new broadsheet along hot off the press to show you my piece about you.”  He settled down in the snow, pulling his wool greatcoat under himself as he sat, and proffered the paper.

Ahrimaz looked at it as though it might bite him but reached out a bare hand and took it.  “I have it folded correctly so you might…” Teel trailed off as Ahrimaz was obviously already reading it.

Then he froze as Ahrimaz’s face flushed bright red, he convulsively crumpled the pages in his hands as his fingers clenched shut. He glared at Teel with murder in his eyes.

“You powder burning, misfiring, scorching, villainous, burnt soul, flaming charcoal dicked, ash headed INSTIGATING scribbler! Aeono’s flaming acid anal beads!  Every piss-ant peasant and burgher, slave and merchant paunch all over Inné KNOWS ME THIS INTIMATELY?!”