I think what I've always hated most about going back to clan lands in not the stares, sneers, and knowledge that only my title allows me to walk free of harm in the villages of the lands, but rather having to tie up Kiren, for fear of losing her. Normally I could leave Kiren to run free; she was smart, and had decided to stay by my side long before. But at home... at home she had to be tied up, else she would run all the way to the farthest edges of the clan lands. She would wait there for me, where she could no longer smell the oppressive scent of the clan all around her, but I would have to make my way there on foot, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.
That is not to say that she wanted to be left alone tied to a post so she couldn't even make her escape. She let out a trembling, frightened whinny as I looped the reins around said post, and I noticed that she was rolling her eyes in fright. Her nostrils flared as she whipped her head around, trying to identify all of the dangers that surrounded her, even though she would only find that her sense of "danger" would include most everyone in the village, with the lone exception of myself. She was panicking, being surrounded by so many threats at one time, but I just couldn't leave her free to run, as my heart prompted me to when I looked at her.
After I finished trying the knot (tight enough so she couldn't pull it loose, but still loose enough that I would eventually be able to untie it), I patted her side in an attempt to calm her a little. Then, I laid my head against hers, as I always did before going into a situation that I was less than confident about. I touched the middle of my forehead to the white star that had been the inspiration for her name and then whispered to her quietly. "I'll be back as soon as I can, love," I told her. "So try to bear with it and wait for me, please?"
I had asked the same thing of her every time I came back to clan lands since I first bought her from a smiling human trader who claimed that his horses were the descendents of some obscure god that I had never even heard of. I'd noticed her uneasiness that first time I brought her into clan lands with me, but I had trusted her to stay, as she had in all of the other places I brought her to, so I hadn't tied her up. I had then discovered my mistake, when I emerged from the temple and prepared to leave, only to find that Kiren had disappeared without a trace. That forced me to make my way back across clan lands on foot, since there was not a single mount to be found within clan lands, only to find Kiren waiting for me at the farthest edge, as if she had done nothing wrong. Since then, I had still asked her to wait, but I had also tied her up, apologizing to her the entire time.
She was too worked up to even give me the usual snort that she gave when I said something particularly absurd, the one that made me think that maybe that trader had been right about her ancestry. Instead, she just rolled her eyes some more and stared at me in a sort of shock as I left her alone in the middle of the village. I forced myself to look away, since I knew that the longer I looked, the more I would want to go back and untie the reins so she could escape.
"One silver says she'll get loose despite your attempts to prevent it," Fa'lyr told me, her mental "voice" cutting straight through my desire to untie Kiren, and thus solving that particular problem.
"And just how would you pay me back if I won?" I asked her.
She projected the image of herself smiling at me, a smile full of trust, and confidence, and not the slightest hint of the mischief that should have been there. It was a completely fabricated image, one she could manipulate at will. But, it was also the best substitute she had for an actual grin without asking me to relinquish control of my body to her. And while she did do a small amount of lying, such as projecting the most trustworthy face she could instead of one that betrayed the fact that she meant nothing but mischief, her images were generally a good indication of how she felt at the time. And, a grin is a grin... never to be trusted when coming from Fa'lyr.
"Why, you'll pay yourself," she said cheerfully. "Just as you will if I win the bet, which I will."
"So what's the point of making the bet in the first place?" I asked her.
"Because we won't know who won the bet if we never make it," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
I shook my head, but said nothing in return. She was probably right; I may have tied Kiren up every time I came back to the clan lands since the first, but not once had I actually ridden out of the clan lands on her back. But, I was already drawing suspicious looks from the elder who had been sent to watch over me. He wouldn't say anything to me, no matter what I did, but he would report any and all of my actions to Oya once I was gone. And that included my talk of betting, an activity frowned upon by the entire clan of Syrr.
Surprisingly enough, I noticed that the one they had watching me this time was my iya, Da'rrrl. I would think that he would be in the center of the clan lands with Oya as he always was. He hated being apart from Oya for long, ever since the time he let Oya leave the clan lands on "business," and he came back with a half breed child. But, instead he was in the main Syrr village, watching me, and I suspected the only thing that could force him into that would be an order from Oya, but Oya acting as the Lyr-oya, not as Da'rrrl's irha. Not when he was spending each and every moment glaring at me as if he wanted to bite off my head. Probably the only thing keeping him from actually doing that was the fact that Oya would never forgive him for doing something to his so-very-precious Bound warrior.
I smiled at him when he noticed me watching him, and then waved at him cheerfully. He just glared back some more, and I'm sure he was thinking of some way to turn my smile and wave into a report that might make Oya (and the Temple, and anyone else who might be interested enough in me to keep me coming back to the clan lands) think twice about calling me back ever again. Perhaps "disrespect to one's elders."
After that, I continued deeper into the village, eventually passing through the reverse curtain of un-flattened grass that separated the Temple of the Binding from the rest of the main Syrr village. The Temple, a great edifice of the same slightly green stone that all actual buildings in the clan lands were built of, hadn't changed at all in the ten years since I had last returned to the clan lands. It still made me feel pathetically small, which was to be expected, considering that it was a Temple in the clan lands. But I was sure that were I to shift into the same form as those who built the Temple, quite a bit larger than the form I preferred to use, I would still feel dwarfed by the Temple, as I had since the first time I set foot past the tall grasses.
I grinned again, as I noticed the crumbled hole in the outer wall of the Temple, over on the north side of the building. That hole reinforced my feelings that while little things all over the village had changed over the years, making it not quite the same place where I had spent my first sixteen years, the Temple would never change that way. The people inside of it might, as well as the people bound to it by ties of a ritual older than history, but the Temple itself would not. I had made that hole, a little over thirty years earlier, when I had forgotten the first rule of shifting to a larger form, a rule I had just been taught a few days before the incident. Always make sure to have enough room for the form you shift into before you shift, else your body, and the magic surrounding it as you shift, will make the room, forcefully if necessary.
I only had a few moments to look around myself and noticed the lack of change in the Temple, however. Apparently the people waiting inside the Temple had been watching for me, and had probably set up a sort of magical trip wire across the tall grasses, to inform them of when I made it to the Temple. I had felt it as I crossed the grasses, but had dismissed the tingle of magic as part of the shields that I knew were there to protect the Temple from harm, both from within the village, and from outsiders. Besides, I would not have suspected something like that, as those inside would have no idea when I might reach the village. They had no clue where I would be when I received the summons, and they had no idea how long it would take me to travel to the clan lands, let alone make it across the vast plains to the village where they awaited me. But, they had been waiting for me, as evidenced by the fact that just moments after I entered the Temple grounds, there were three figures emerging from the front doors of the Temple, all three of whom I recognized right away.
One of them was Da'syrr, my nhara. Seeing him in the Syrr village was nothing surprising, though seeing him at the Temple was. He tended to avoid the Temple like the plague, particularly when I was in residence. His presence there when I had been summoned meant, even more so than the people waiting for me to arrive, that whatever was going on was quite a bit more important than I thought it was. Only a direct order from Oya, or perhaps something that endangered the clan, could get him into the Temple, a place that he saw as antiquated and useless for anything other than the ritual that most of the clans reveled in. The fact that the humans also followed the Binding only worsened his hatred for the place that had become such an integral part of my life.
The second was the Elder of the Temple. He was the one who I always expected to see there, as he left the Temple grounds only rarely, and never when he knew that a young one may be coming back to pay his respects. Certainly not when he was expecting a young one, like when such a young one had been summoned to appear at the Temple for matters unknown, but quite obviously urgent.
But it was the third, not Da'syrr, who surprised me the most. Da'myn had been one of my few companions while I was growing up, one of the few children in the village whose oyas would let them interact with "that filthy half-breed." I wouldn't call him a friend, because he held no feelings of fondness for me, but he at least had talked to me, and he had on occasion trained with me. Back then he had been arrogant, like most of the others in the village, but not particularly talented, and he had never quite been able to overcome my accomplishments, something that aggravated him to no end.
I knew he was close to Da'syrr, despite the fact that Da'syrr was twice his age. The last time I had been back to the clan lands he had been serving as a sort of messenger for Da'syrr, running various errands and taking care of trivial things that, despite the fact that they didn't mean anything, made him overjoyed, because he was doing something for the clan. And apparently he had gotten promoted over the course of the ten years I had spent away from the clan lands, as I was more than certain that Da'syrr wouldn't let a mere messenger into whatever he felt needed my attention so badly. Still, I could tell just by looking at him that he had yet to perform any act sufficiently great to earn him his second pair of wings, despite his now adult status in the clan.
Between Da'myn and Da'syrr, both of whom were staring at me with obvious disappointment and displeasure on their faces, I wasn't sure which one looked more unhappy with me, my nhara, or my childhood acquaintance. But it was clear that neither one of them was particularly enjoying having me back in the village again. And even worse was the fact that they both had to deal with me while I was back. That made me wonder what in the world was so urgent to require not just the Temple Elder, but the Ri-oya of clan Syrr as well, but I knew that we would eventually get around to that, after the formalities of a Warrior returning to the Temple after an absence, that is.
"Greetings, Elder," I said, bowing my head slightly in deferment to the Elder. "Nhara, Da'myn," I continued, bowing my head to them as well.
"It is good to see you again, young one," the Elder said to me. "Have you been well? Are the human lands agreeing with you?"
"I am well," I replied. "And the human lands are agreeing with me very much. Of course, I'm not sure that half of the people there know all that much that is fact about me." He nodded, realizing what I meant by that statement without needing to hear it straight out.
"What do you think you're doing!?" Da'syrr finally exclaimed, practically exploding with anger. I turned to him, letting my confusion show across my face, though I had the faintest suspicion that I might know why he was angry, besides just my presence in the village.
"I'm greeting the Elder," I said. "What's wrong with that?"
"Who do you think you are, coming into the village like that?" he practically screamed. I suspected that they could hear him all the way on the other side of the village, despite the heavy layers of magic separating the Temple grounds from the rest of the village. "And even more, entering the sacred grounds of the Temple in that form!"
"My form?" I asked him. "I see nothing wrong with it."
He scowled, though I suppose scowl is not quite the right word for the expression that filled his face. Scowl is too peaceful, too kind, and nowhere near bloodthirsty enough to describe the look that passed across Da'syrr's face at that moment. But, at the same time, it was also a scowl, an angry scowl, but still a scowl.
"You are desecrating the Temple just by being here, you filth!" he spat.
"How so?" I asked. "By coming in this form?" He nodded at that, the motion so violent that I almost thought his head would come loose from his neck. "You would rather I came as you are?"
"Of course!" he hissed.
"But the Temple requires only that we come in a form given to us at birth," I commented, my voice light, as if wasn't discussing something that was of such importance to one of the members of the conversation. I had let myself slip into "lecture mode," which was Fa'lyr's favorite way to refer to my occasional bouts of impromptu informative speech. For me, and for this particular situation, this "lecture mode" was a safe thing, because I tended to separate myself from the emotions and opinions attached to the subject when I lectured. Instead I chose to focus on pure fact, something that Da'syrr wouldn't be able to argue with when I was done, because the Elder could back me up when it came to the accuracy of what I said.
"The Temple, and all of its kin around the land, welcomes all beings, of all shapes," I continued. "We rarely see non-clan worshippers at this particular Temple, because of its location, but that does not change the fact that anyone is welcome, provided they adhere to the rules of the Temple. And, as I am sure you know, the prime rule of the Temple is that you wear your natural form, or one of them, when entering.
"And you know quite well that because of my half-breed nature I have more than one "natural form." The form I wear now is just as valid here in the Temple as the one that you wear. And as long as I follow the rules of the Temple, I fail to see why you should have any objections to the form I choose to assume."
He stared at me silently, thinking long and hard about what I had just said. He knew that my words were true, and that, other than his general dislike for anything wearing the form of a human, particularly when in the clan lands, he had no real reason to persecute me for my choice of shape to live in. He didn't like the idea, but he still knew it was true, and that the Elder would not be happy at all if he pressed his point after my having pointed out its failings.
"Besides," I added as I watched him think. "I have been traveling as fast as I could for the last two weeks. While I have not been doing the actual walking, I am still tired out from that. I haven't had a good night's sleep since before I received the summons. And, to be perfectly honest, I am not sure if I have the energy to shift forms at the moment without falling asleep right in front of you. Would I be correct in assuming, Nhara, that that would be insufferably rude of me?"
This time he really did scowl, or rather, his features took on a shape that vaguely resembled a human scowl. It just didn't work quite right on one of the clans, as clan facial structure is significantly different from a human's and doesn't have even slightly similar arrangement of muscles. But it was a definite imitation of a human scowl, one that was well recognized among the clan, despite its obviously non-clan origins.
He looked over to the Elder, who did nothing in response. That was his way of telling Da'syrr that he would not make the decision for him. But, more than that, it was his indication for me that he agreed completely, and that, should it come down to it, he would side with me on the issue. Then, Da'syrr snorted and hunched back slightly.
"Fine..." he growled. "But let it be known that I am not happy."
"As if that wasn't obvious..." Fa'lyr commented, for my "ears" only, as she chose not to try and take control of my mouth from me. "But then, is he ever happy with you?"
"He was happy when we were Bound," I replied, this time taking the extra effort to do it silently as I hadn't earlier, mostly because this time I had an audience that wouldn't appreciate my words. "I went away. The clan gained quite a bit of prestige. Oya became Lyr-oya. And Da'syrr finally became the acting Ri-oya of the clan. I'd say he was more than happy with me then."
"You have a point..." she said. "But..." But she fell silent after that, hearing the Elder clear his throat right before Da'syrr decided to start talking.
"Anyway..." he growled, not sounding the least bit pleased about the situation. "We summoned you here."
"Tell us something we didn't know," Fa'lyr said. I immediately mentally hushed her, which earned me an imagined pout.
"We should have this discussion inside," the Elder said. "This is not talk that should be heard by just anyone who comes to worship at the Temple." Da'syrr grunted in agreement, and before we went any farther with the issue, we all headed into one of the inner, more private, rooms of the Temple, where we would at least have warning before a new person tried to join us.
"The issue at hand is one for both the clan and one for the Temple, thus the location of this meeting," he continued. "If you hadn't heard, the young prince of the human kingdom of Jether reached his majority less than a week ago."
I hadn't heard that. More than that, I couldn't quite remember which of the human kingdoms was Jether, which was probably much of the reason that I hadn't heard that Jether's prince had come of age. I wasn't about to ask Da'syrr which kingdom Jether was, but that left me trying to dig up at least some fragments of memory that might tell me which kingdom we were talking about.
"Jether is the kingdom just to the east of Hastrin," Fa'lyr said, drawing from her considerably more developed knowledge of the kingdoms of the human lands. "They follow the Way of the Binding closely, but they're also a very proud people. They were at war with Hastrin until about thirty or so years ago, when the Hasters killed off their crown prince and the younger prince was forced to take the throne. He ended the war, surrendering a rather large chunk of land to the Hasters, and things haven't been quite right in the kingdom since then. But rumor has it the current prince, who is the only child of this king, is a prophesized hero, though no one can state which prophecy it is that refers to him."
"Oh, that place..." I said, recognizing the kingdom she had described to me. I had been there before, during the long span of years after their war ended when the king was desperately trying to rebuild his kingdom. The people there had been even more wary of me than they were in most kingdoms, and I had felt particularly out of place from the start. I still returned there, often, but only because of the Temple, and the Elder who resided there.
"Part of the ceremony for his birthday was a Binding," Da'syrr said, which didn't surprise me all that much. Not if people claimed he was a prophesized hero. Especially not if he had the skills that made that rumor seem believable, which I was fairly sure he did. Otherwise they wouldn't have managed to get a priest of the Binding to actually attend and perform the ceremony.
"As proof of our goodwill toward that kingdom, and the human race in general, we sent the Elder from this temple to perform the Binding."
I almost fell off of my seat on the single human-sized chair in the room with that comment. "What?" I squeaked, not in a tone of outrage, which is what I might have imagined coming from Da'syrr's mouth had our positions been reversed, but in a tone of complete and utter surprise and confusion. Out of everything that I might have expected to come from him, that was the absolute last thing I would have thought of. Well, with the exception of him announcing that he wanted to be human, but that particular thought would have had nothing to do with anything he had been saying before.
Da'syrr hated humans. He wanted nothing to do with humans, and he probably would have been quite a bit happier if they just didn't exist. That included half-breeds, like myself, and sometimes I even thought that he held more disdain for those of mixed blood than he did for pure humans, but that wasn't of any particular import at that moment. What did matter was that Da'syrr was in charge of clan Syrr, and thus also the only person not of a Temple who could claim to be in charge of the Elder of Syrr village. Except for Oya, acting as the Lyr-oya, that is... And he would never send an important figure like the Elder to a human to perform a binding, not unless he had someone else, more important than he was, leaning on him to do it.
"It was Oya's idea, not mine," Da'syrr said, sounding even bitterer than I would have expected. "He actually seems to believe the rumors about the prince, that he is some prophesized hero, and he's trying to suck up to him now before he can decide that he hates the clans. And since the main Temple of the Binding is here in the clan lands, Oya figured that the best way to get on the prince's good side would be to bring out a true priest. He couldn't get in touch with the main Temple, though, so he sent our Elder instead."
"Oya believes the rumors?" I asked, not quite sure how I was supposed to believe that. I knew quite well that Oya was not the kind of person to just believe rumors, so there had to be some grain of truth to the claim that the prince was a prophesized hero. But still... even knowing a true legendary hero in the form of Fa'lyr, it was hard for me to let myself believe that some prince might be someone who had been destined to be a hero since long before his birth.
Da'syrr nodded. "I'm not sure why, but he believes the rumors. And he helped the Elder decide who to Bind to the prince too."
This, even more than the fact that the Elder from our village had been sent to Bind this prince, was something that I just couldn't believe. Rather, this entire conversation was one that I would never have guessed would ever happen, and it was just getting odder and odder the longer it continued. But this time it made no sense. I had been involved in two Bindings, other than my own, and in both times I had been the one to guide the spirit in toward our plane so that he (or she) could be Bound to a host. Even then, I had had no say whatsoever in what spirit I would be guiding. All I did was sit there and call out to whatever spirit the Elder indicated. And, from what I knew and had been told, no one besides the Elder presiding over the ceremony was ever involved in choosing the spirit for a new Bound warrior. So to hear that Oya had been involved in choosing this prince's spirit... that was just something that I could not accept from Da'syrr.
"Are you sure?" I asked him, which earned me a look from him, as if to ask me if I had finally lost my mind after being among the humans so long. So I looked over to the Elder.
"It is true," he said, nodding slowly. "I allowed the Lyr-oya to aid in selecting the spirit to be bound to the prince of Jether. He showed considerable tolerance in being willing to sponsor a new Bound warrior of a completely different people than his own, and I trusted him to provide me with the proper advice on what sort of spirit would be the most beneficial for the boy when considering the fact that he would one day be a ruler."
"Who did you choose?" I had to ask it, even though I knew that it wasn't the type of question that should ever be asked of an Elder, unless the questioner was also an Elder. I needed to know what sort of spirit Oya had chosen for a human prince, when I knew that Oya's disdain for humans was only dwarfed by Da'syrr's in that Oya had been willing to get himself a half-breed bastard in order to gain some power.
Unfortunately for the peace between Da'syrr and myself, and Da'myn and myself as well, and my general reputation throughout the village, it had to be that particular sentence when the difficulties cropped up. To explain, since this is a problem that doesn't happen often among humans, and certainly not for the same reasons, I must make it clear that I was not quite speaking the same language as the three clan members with whom I was speaking at the time. They were speaking the language of the clans, the same language that all four of us were named in (though if anyone but the Elder knew what his name was, he didn't make it known). Unsurprisingly enough, the language of the clans was the only officially recognized language in the clan lands, any human tongue being more or less ignored as part of a rather overt plot to try and drive any non-clan being out of the lands that the clan claimed as their own.
I was speaking a similar language, one that didn't have an official name, since it wasn't considered an actual language of its own, but was quite commonly known as the half-breed tongue. It was based off of clan tongue, and was near indistinguishable to the human ear, though to the average clan ear and the trained half-breed ear the differences were as plain as the differences between human tongues and clan tongue. The main difference was in the structure of a half-breed's mouth. Half-breed tongue was a made-up language, designed to be pronounceable without having to shift into clan form, but not so simplified as to be incomprehensible to one of the clan. For the most part, half-breed tongue was not a confusing addition to a conversation, but every now and then someone could mistake the context of a word, or misinterpret the sound that comes out of a half-breed's mouth, and that would cause some major problems.
Luckily for me, the only confusion that happened at that moment was a minor one. It wasn't a challenge to the king of human land, as had happened to Fa'lyr when she first took the throne. But still, it was more than a little embarrassing when the Elder spoke up, saying "Who did I bed?" the word "choose" in half-breed tongue sounding quite similar to "bed" in both half-breed and clan tongues.
"No, choose," I repeated, attempting to stress the difference between the two words, despite the fact that I could not quite pronounce the difference with the mouth of my chosen form. After noticing that I was getting nothing but blank stares, still, from the Elder, Da'syrr, and Da'myn, I ended up spelling out the word, which cleared up the confusion, but only after once again convincing Da'syrr that I was a dirty heathen for choosing to appear in a human form in front of him.
"The one who the Lyr-oya suggested was not by any stretch of the imagination a famous person," the Elder told me. "I had never encountered any records of that particular man, who was apparently a rather well-known general, human of course, in his time. He was Bound upon reaching his majority, and was offered a throne during his middle years, but he refused it, and was instead responsible for the rise of several famous kings and queens in the human lands, as well as one of the more influential Ri-oyas of clan history."
"I think I know who he might be talking about..." Fa'lyr commented to me. "That description sounds familiar, and if he's who I'm thinking about, then I understand why your oya would support him so much, since I knew him. He would have been better off being born to the clans."
"His name was Jayvid," the Elder said.
"I almost had to take him as my husband, you know," Fa'lyr said. "Oya would have loved it if I had, but I refused to get anywhere near him once I realized that the clan had him in their sights. He would have fit in just fine if he had been born to the clans, but instead he was inflicted upon the human race. I felt sorry for them at the time, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't good at what he did. I think your oya chose well, for once."
"Fa'lyr knows him," I told the others, which earned me a look of surprise from Da'syrr. "She said she almost had to marry him." I decided that it probably would not work well for me if I mentioned the rest of what Fa'lyr had told me of him, since he was the one who Oya had picked, and Da'syrr would stand by Oya's decision any day, no matter what someone who had actually known the man said. "So, what happened that you needed me?"
"Jayvid is still in the other plane," the Elder said.
I couldn't say that I was surprised. Besides being the only Bound warrior in the entire clan, and thus the first person to get called on the clan when something went wrong in a Temple, I had one other peculiarity that would get me called upon by other Temples around the world. The spirit that had been chosen for me, over twenty years earlier when they were first preparing me for my Binding, had been a rather well known swordsman and mage who had run an entire human kingdom (despite not being human) back in the times of my raoyas. He had been picked especially to complement my less aggressive nature even before I had proven myself sufficiently to warrant the Binding, and everyone who knew of the choice had agreed that it would be the right one.
But then, when it actually came time to do the Binding, he had refused to come out to the call of the presiding Bound warrior, and even the call of the Elder. Instead, Fa'lyr had presented herself to them, despite the fact that she had never been Bound in life. She had come to them with the message from the one they had chosen, saying that he stepped away from his position in order for Fa'lyr to fill it better than he could. The Elder hadn't had a choice, since once the ceremony of the Binding is started, it must be completed, else the focus suffers, so he had Bound Fa'lyr to me instead of the warrior who had been chosen for me. And since then, I got called on whenever something unusual happened with a Binding, whether it was a Binding from my home Temple or not.
The fact that I was thinking about my own Binding must have shown on my face, from the next words that came out of the Elder's mouth. "This was not like your Binding, Ma'rrrl. I remember the ease with which that one happened. This... this was not a peaceful joining. Jayvid showed up to be Bound to the young prince. I had him halfway Bound, in fact, when another spirit showed up, this one with near limitless power, especially compared to the rather unmagical Jayvid.
"He actually overpowered me so much that I lost consciousness for a few moments, during which time he managed to completely sever the forming tie between Jayvid and the boy. When I came to, this unknown spirit had already attached himself to the boy, without the aid of any Elder, and Jayvid was nowhere to be found. The boy was unconscious, and I had no choice but to complete the Binding, before his condition worsened."
"And you have no idea who the spirit you bound to the prince is?" I asked.
The Elder shook his head with a sigh. "I am almost tempted to say that he must be a god."