(2/19/12) Commentary: As of today, this is finished, so I thought I might write a bit about what I was trying to do here. This story began in my biochemistry class, interestingly enough; we were talking about lipids, and it struck me that some of that stuff begged to be used in fantasy narrative. After kicking around a few plot ideas, I opened up the CS and took a look at Vos. And I noticed something interesting - there's an Ashlander Wise Woman just out and out living in Vos in 3E 427. I mean, what? She doesn't even have any unique dialogue or by the by explanations, she's just there, unashamed, living out her life in a house. So I decided to explain that, and this story became about exploring the interactions between the Ashlanders and the settled Dunmer of Vos in the largely un-elucidated time period of Morrowind's history before the Nerevarine pops up his head. There's no specific date set, because we know so little about what was going on anyway. My intent has been to explore and expand upon the lore in a way that is concrete, detailed, and realistic. MK's got the unapproachable alien stuff down, so I thought I'd offer something different; strangeness, but presented in a way that lets the reader feel they could walk right into its midst. You get to decide whether or not I have succeeded.

And so it is my utmost hope that you enjoy,

The Chandler

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part I : Vehk

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Part II : Ayem

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Part III : Seht

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Prologue

Vos was a town caught, like a scrib’s pale carapace in an alit’s acid slaked fangs. Not geographically, though – it was a seaside settlement, on the shores of shattered Zafirbel Bay, with the rolling rock bluffed hills of Vvardenfell’s Grazelands at its back. Those hills were, of course, the cause of the town’s conception, maturation, and stubborn entrenchment; the hills and their soil, the dark loam, fertile and lush – at least in comparison to most of Vvardenfell’s ash laden lands. Morrowind was a harsh province, by and large, sharp like the ivory teeth of its predators, rasped like the ebony souls of its people. What verdancy it possessed was all the more precious for its scarcity against the dominant rocky ashlands, the volcanic steam fields, and the rivers of raw magma. Thus were the Grazelands contested grounds, despite their official status as an Imperial preserve in the mostly inactive hands of the Tribunal Temple, like all of the island of Vvardenfell in those years. But the unsettled Dunmer, the true-hearted followers of Veloth, the tribal Ashlanders, cared little for the laws of the weak settled folk, and nothing for those of their Imperial overlords.

Three tribes then roamed Vvardenfell’s eastern hills and fields; the Zainab, to the west, in the shadow of Red Mountain; the Erabenimsun, in the south, hovering on the cusp of the grim, volcanic Molag Amur wastelands; and the Ahemmusa, up and down the eastern shoreline, erecting their yurts on the myriad tiny islands of Zafirbel Bay – the Salt-Mouth Velothi, renowned in their ferocity and courage, in their daring to live beneath the Telvanni mushroom towers. Vos stood as the Temple’s gauntlet of contention against these heretical foes – but it was a token challenge, halfhearted at best, for Temple warriors visited the place but rarely, more consumed with the rooting out of the worshippers of the Bad Daedra, and with their passive aggression against the struggling Septim Empire than wresting lands from barbarians who were, at least, Dunmer and reverent of all the correct ancestors save Three.

So the Grazelands were held by the roaming Ashlanders in the ancient traditions of the followers of the prophet Veloth, and Vos was left in peace, for the most part, to reap the wild wickwheat from the hillsides around the town’s ancient stonemold foundations, to work the irrigated sand paddies of saltrice and marshmerrow along the shore, and to tithe most of their crop to the Temple on the regular collection barges. They tended as well the Mudan-Mul egg mine, hive-burrow of the giant, semi-domesticated Morrowind insects known as the Kwama, sending the excess eggs on the Temple’s ship for export to the rest of the Empire as a simple foodstuff. Their fields were so small, their houses so few, their intrusions through the hills to Mudan-Mul so rare that all three Ashlander tribes were by and large satisfied, in the Grazelands’ rolling expanse, to restrict themselves to petty raids and routine kidnappings and extortions for most of the year.

Most of the year. Rain was plentiful and regular from late winter to early fall most years, but the lands thirsted nigh unto desiccation as winter wore on. By the universal law of the migrant herdsmen, the Ashlanders followed the lead of lushest grazing, that their guar would fatten and grow large for slaughter. Each year the drying fields drove the Zainab closer and closer to the eastern coast, and the stalking grounds of the Ahemmusa. And each year the Zainab found recourse for the final month of winter in the fresh water hot springs that welled up on the heights above Vos. And so each year Vos was caught, a small hateful knot of settled Dunmer trapped between the desperate Zainab and the voracious wave-riding Ahemmusa, as the dry grey skies brooded and the ash storms sprawled over the western hills, swirling out over the Ghostfence necklace from Red Mountain’s hunched shoulders.

But like the scrib’s chitinous exoskeleton, Vos was no comfortable morsel to have between one’s teeth. No Dunmer of Morrowind could be described as soft, in those days, but even less so those born and bred in the shadow of Dagoth Ur. The people of Vos had endured the raids and battles of the Ashlanders for hundreds of years without assistance from either Temple warriors or the heartless Telvanni in their towers; they knew how to preserve their lives and at least some of their harvest, if not their fields, when the Ahemmusa came to steal the finest guar from the dwindled Zainab. The Elvuls and Andases were nearly as comfortable shearing heads of flesh as heads of grain with the short bladed iron scythes they used to collect the wickwheat from the steep hills; Arasea Drenim might be in her third century, but she could still split skulls with a hammer in each of her scar flecked blacksmith’s hands, as could her son, Vuroni; the kresh weaving Iranos all had vicious hands with nooses; Maissel, the chandler, knew how to use his butcher’s knives for flesh that yet lived; and all the villagers, save the priest and his apprentices, would take up arms if the fighting found its way past the village’s gate. This was the land of the Dunmer during the long years of the Septims’ provincial neglect, and even the weak were strong.

And furthermore, the place Vos itself was a place of strength and security, at least against the disorganized charges of the wild Velothi. The stonemold village was built on a low cliff overlook by the shore, the houses snugged close together in a jumbled semicircular wall around the chapel and an empty central plaza, accessible only by a single defensible gate. The largest homes were towers, backing on the temple, and from their roofs look-outs could warn of approaching Ashlanders and archers could pick off attackers. True, they could not preserve their fields or the harvest stored in the granaries around the village, but they saved enough to survive and to turn a healthy profit over to the Temple. They were a secretive, sly people, the Dunmer, but the settled folk perhaps more so than the traditionalists; the Ashlanders knew nothing, for instance, of the large natural cistern below the village, where most of the crop was secreted in floating oiled barrels when the raids descended. Thus did the town of Vos entrench itself and the Temple’s hold on the Grazelands, and niggle in the teeth of the Ashlanders.

For most of the year, though, Vos was a peaceful place, a place that changed little on the surface from year to year despite the cold stewing that went on below. Again like the scrib, it was an oddly…larval place. It was a town eternally on the edge of many things; the Temple, the ocean, the grasslands, the Ashlanders, and settled Dunmer society itself. The place had a tendency to unsettle House mer and to steady the more open minded Ashlanders, to turn pious worshippers of Morrowind’s living gods, the Tribunal, toward greater ancestor reverence, and cynics to the benefits of a trio of ascended mortals. Outland Dunmer who came to Vos did not leave, if they stayed but a while, and learned what it meant to be truly Dunmer, but the town’s children were constantly abandoning their birthplace – yet it never seemed to change. Perhaps it was a virtue of the long lives of mer, even mer who lived lives as hard as those in Vos. It was stuck, perpetually, in a slow flux that would have smacked of stagnation to Men.

And maybe – perhaps – it could be – Vos was larval in a developmental as well as a catalytic sense. Something about the place hinted of grand transformation, of revolution, something in the natural division of labor and the stubborn stewardship which had grown up in the people’s hearts through the generations… something in the hard, sulfurous mineral water, perhaps, that had welled its way out of the volcanic earth and into the people’s souls. For this is a story, not about Vos itself, but about its spirit, and about the mer who exemplified it.



Maissel Sarethi was a quiet mer, humble and pious in manner, and almost invisible in the monotony of his routine. He was not Vos’ oldest resident, but his family was perhaps its most constant. He served as the town’s chandler, as his father Aravel had served before him, and his grandfather Ecaz before that, out of the Second Era when Resdayn yet reigned as a sovereign nation. His was the rendering of fats to tallow for candles, the extraction of oils for lanterns and cooking, the saponification of nix lard to soap, the purification of sealant waxes and the preparation of salted lardo treats for the High Priests in Vivec city. All done according to the ancient recipes handed down through his family, and all the same with each turning season. He kept the town of Vos clean, snug and illuminated as an ancestral duty, tithing the rest of what he produced to the Temple, and for his work the town supplied for his needs. Irisea Irano patched his simple peasant clothes and provided new per rare request; Vuroni Drenim repaired his tools and sharpened his knives when his mother let him; the Elvuls and Andases laid by a stock of saltrice, wickwheat, and herbs for his use; Ilinat, Hetman Aralas’ wife, provided his simple redware dishes and storage crocks from her potters’ wheel and kiln; her daughter, Chana Aralas, a sprightly young thing at just thirty years, with a sweet smile and soft eyes like stoneflowers in the crags of her prominent cheekbones and hooked nose, had taken it upon herself to see that the mer’s narrow tower home was always as clean as could be and perfumed with shalk musk incense against the noisome fumes of his craft (that the musk was also an aphrodisiac was irrelevant – and so far ineffectual); and they all shared a bit of each butchered guar or netch to keep their fat-smith out of emaciation.

Yes, Maissel was in the hands of Vos’ villagers (except for Chana’s), but he was not, for the most part, in their minds (except for Chana’s). He was a fixture, a reliable fact of nature like spring monsoons and Ashlander raids. For one hundred and seventy three years he had been in Vos at his work; his whole life. Forever, to everyone younger than he; forever, to everyone older, for they could not truly remember when his father had been slain by the Ahemmusa and he had assumed full responsibilities. There was a quiet, rawboned mer to make their candles and feed their lanterns, as there always had been; who noticed that this one’s eyes were magma where the other’s had been beetle black, or that this one yet lacked a wife despite that he had slipped into middle age decades past? The people of Vos did not think of their chandler individually; that Chana did was simply the action of the larval hive mind’s unconscious role preservation.

And Maissel did not usually think of the villagers. He delivered their soap and their candles, stripped the fat from the flesh when they butchered a guar or returned from a rare hunt with a nix hound across their backs, exchanged friendly words and nods in passing, even sometimes shared a goblet of mazte with the Hetman or Arasea, the old blacksmith, but he did not really think of them. He knew them, inside and out, as he knew every inch of his birthplace and ancestral home, but they did not know him. This too, he knew, and so did not think of them. Not even poor, sweet young Chana, though his stomach had knowledge too, and it told him that their marriage was inevitable, preordained; but he did not think of it, even when she was in his house with her long scarlet hair purposefully loose in enticement.

Maissel and the rest of the village only truly crossed each other’s minds about once a year, in Sun’s Dawn, when the land fairly crackled with thirst and the suffering Zainab made their camp on the heights above town. Then, every year, Maissel did the one thing that visibly set him apart from the rest of the village; he spoke to the Ashlanders. Or the Ashlanders spoke to him; sometimes it seemed one, sometimes the other, sometimes both, but all three set him apart in the momentarily disgruntled mind of Vos. The villagers did not trust any of the lying, thieving barbarians, though they knew that it was the Ahemmusa, who came always from the bay, who destroyed their fields, not the weak Zainab from the west. The Ashlanders, for their part, were contemptuous of the Dunmer who had abandoned the ways of Veloth and chosen to worship mortal betrayers, and yet insisted on naming themselves Velothi from time to time. The Zainab were too few to threaten the town, but nor would they have traded or spoken with them, even had the villagers been amenable. Like the furrowed land, the rifts in the Dunmer people ran deep.

Except, it seemed, with Maissel Sarethi. Every year when the yurts appeared around the sulfur well at the broken crown of the hill over Vos, an Ashlander would appear at the edge of town, waiting, silent and grim red eyes staring unseeingly through the other villagers until someone went to fetch the chandler and the two would go off a little distance to speak. A business arrangement, presumably, for Maissel always disappeared a few days later for the butchering of the Ashlanders’ best herd animals, the docile reptilian guar, before the Ahemmusa could steal them, and he always returned with a cartload of red tinged scraps and hunks of guar fat, his arms stained bloody to the elbows. No one knew why the Ashlanders would tolerate Maissel’s company when they would not that of any other settled Dunmer, or why they did not use the services of their own chandler. Perhaps the mer himself did not know, but the arrangement held steady, year after year… until, quite without warning, something changed. An Ashlander entered the town, and the larval focus shifted to Maissel.

I have never played Morrowind so I have a hard time truly pictureing your description of what seems like a very prosperous city. You put more description into that rather than your first character. which you seem to describe him very well. However upon your prolouge I would of liked to see a bit more action because as it stands currently your opener is rather boring. Usually the prolouges I find most interesting have an equal balance of description of scenery as well as more than one character with some kind of action in them. IE burning buildings and trying to save people while someone close to the protagonist(s) dies and starts some kind of drama turmoil or a description of an event like some grand enemy is attacking a bunch of hapless adventurers or fighters and then it leads off to describe 1 day/ 1 year earlier kind of thing.

However for being 2,359 word count you have done very well, a very long description rather than a short block of text.

AN: This isn't really the hackable slashable breed of fic. Also, if you haven't played Morrowind then stop reading fanfic and fix that situation. Thanks for the feedback! And Also: lolwut dialogue? Not the end of Part One. Just all I'm typing today.

Part One: Vehk

Chapter I

"Yours is the Enigma, oh Warrior-Wife."

"The tine of Truth," rumbled the congregation in response. The grating voices of Dunmeri males vibrated through the bones of the chapel, both living and dead. It was the center of the town, that ancient, domed stonemold building with its greyish green carpets and tapestries. Though it was a house of death in that it held the cremated remains of Vos' ancestry in the open pits set in the stone floor, it was in a more truthful sense the center of the community. Here the people were born and named, married and healed; here they came to commune with the ancestors and make proper reverence to the Living Gods, Vivec, Almalexia, and Sotha Sil, and here would they be returned when their lives were done, to give guidance and comfort in their turn to their descendants. It was a tomb; it was a temple; it was a dead heart beating.

"Yours is the Shadow-Mantle, oh Poet-Prince," intoned the robed priest from where he knelt atop a hard prayer stool facing the black lacquered triolith, his back to Vos' kneeling assemblage arrayed across the stone floor. Late afternoon sunlight, tinted red by the glass of the dome, poured into the temple and fell in a soft glow over the priests' shoulder, like an anointment. The chapel was otherwise unlit, and dark except where the soft diffuse beam fell.

"From Mephala's black hands," responded the people of Vos solemnly.
The priest bowed his head to the triolith. "You are our lamb of Mystery," he said, and the two hooded acolytes kneeling at his sides spread their grey palms across the stone floor before them in an attitude of prostration. With a pop, a tiny blue flame flared to life before them, seated in the left most arm of an ornate cast iron candelabra set against the wall behind the triolith. Not just a wall, though; a fresco in bonemold; the Three in stylized relief. The pale blue light illumined the cloven countenance of resin-bound Vivec, poet-warrior god of the Tribunal.

The priest raised his white-maned head as he continued, beetle eyes on Almalexia, the fresco's central figure.

"Yours are the runes of Mercy, Marble-browed Mother."

"The foundations of sanctity," answered the faithful once more.

"Yours is the conception, oh Queen of Conspiracy."

"The temperament of Boethiah."

"You are our Scheme of Solidarity." Again the priest bowed his head, and again his apprentices made their supplication before the triolith. Dull red flames rose beneath Almalexia's benevolent horned head, pulsing in counterpoint to the softness of Vivec's holy candle.

One last time, the priestly intonation, the solemn gravelly echoes through the small chapel.

"Yours is the inherited Heresy, oh steaming Priest."

"The cog of time."

"Yours is the cloister of prophecy, gilded Librarian."

"Azura, in crystal chrysalized."

The third candle burned gold beside the others, and as the priests and parishioners bowed their heads in silent reverence, the illuminated fresco seemed to pulse as though with heartbeat, the three molded figures throbbing in their respective glows like blood filled blisters.

The priest whispered as he raised his head. "The ending of all things is ALMSIVI; ALMSIVI be praised."
And the yearly affirmation of the Dunmeri faith was done. The priests pushed themselves up from their prayer stools and began moving along the walls, lighting the candelabra that had been left cold for the winter ritual. The villagers, too, rose from their kneeling rows to mill slowly toward the exit, but Maissel remained on the floor for a few moments more as he always did, making his own private dedication to the Three. He was a pious mer, a mer of faith, gods, and ancestors - though not necessarily always in that order. His parents had raised him to respect and gratitude, and to those things he held.

"A good one, no?" came the gruff voice of old Arasea Drenim from above him. "That Bael boy is coming along well; young Gunaz will make a fine priest out of him one day. At least, your candles aren't in puddles on the floor by his ineptitude this year."

Maissel finished the last few words of his silent prayer and pressed his grey lips to the floor before sitting back on his heels to look into the womer's wrinkled face, with her collapsed purse-neck mouth - the last of her teeth fallen out the year before - and her sharp, steady black eyes.

"Yakin is hotheaded and undisciplined yet," said Maissel, getting to his feet, "but he has a genuine gift for tending to the hurts of others, as a priest should. Gunaz has been priest since I was a boy, but we will not suffer overmuch when Bael replaces him."

"Mmm," mused Arasea, svcking her gums, a skeptical tilt to her white eyebrow. "Perhaps. I won't be around to suffer through his formative years, so I suppose I don't give a damn whether the rest of you will have to endure for a while cures of incredible flatulence, now do I?"

Maissel chuckled, shaking his head. "You just won't let Gunaz' youthful ineptitudes die, will you?"
The old womer snorted. "At my age, if one thing goes it all does, and I'm not ready to join my old father down there quite yet." She eyed askance the pit before them, filled with the ash and crumbling bone shards of generations of Vos villagers. "I plagued the mer too much when I was young and incorrigible for him to welcome me into the spirit world and back to his side."

"You say that as though your nature has changed," muttered Vuroni, Arasea's son, from over her shoulder.

Maissel winced. Truth it might be, but it was a stubborn-stupid mer who said something like that to a womer like Arasea. And sure enough, the storm clouds came agathering in those grey cumulus wrinkles, lightning flashed in the glinting of her beady narrowed eyes, and her long nailed thumb and forefinger shot behind her to her son's pointed ear.

"You ungrateful little piece of man-meat!" she growled as her son yowled with his face on a level with her shoulder. "To say such a thing to your own mother, your progenitor, your sole support and protection in this world! And in the Chapel! Why I've never seen such a rank display of ingratitude against such a backdrop of piety! It's positively shameful!"

"Mother!" squeaked Vuroni, "Let me go!"

"I will not," she stated firmly, turning from Maissel and toward the exit, where the last stragglers were making their way out of the Temple. "I won't have my conscience saddled with the knowledge that I let such disgusting, disgraceful behavior run rampant from my own son! You listen to me, and you listen well, boy! When dealing with one's mother, one must behave as though she were a delicate stoneflower, or priceless glass sculpture, perhaps. One must..." The two passed through the door and out of Maissel's hearing, Vuroni hopping along in a stoop behind his straight backed little mother, yipping each time one of her purposeful strides yanked on his twisted ear.

Maissel grunted quietly, shaking his head as he made his way across the room through the dissipating crowd. Vuroni Drenim had been under his mother’s thumb from the day he was born, the he truly was not a weakling except in comparison with that venerable lady. The boy – boy for nearly a hundred years now – would do well when he was finally on his own; so had Maissel reflected after every such episode in the boy’s lifetime. It was a matter of course to do so, or a reflex, almost the same as the ritual of obtaining two of his tapers from the priest’s boy, of planting them in the chapel’s central ash pit and of lighting them in the honor of his parents, Ghanimah and Aravel Sarethi. He watched the rice paper wicks burn with golden flame for a few seconds before bowing his head for one final prayer. The candles would be left to burn themselves down to the ash; flame to dust, flesh to spirit. All around the circular pit his guar-tallow candles were burning, planted in the bones of Vos by the hands of Vos for the ancestors of Vos. Gunaz, the priest, and his apprentices would collect the melted and hardened wax later and return it to him, to be melted down again and recycled. Only for holy use, of course; it was blasphemy to burn for profane use tapers containing the dust of the ancestors.

Someone jostled against him as he strode across the bare stonemold floor to the exit. Her body was soft, where it pressed against his arm; this was Chana Aralas, with her hopeful eyes.

“Oh!” she gasped, catching his arm through his bleached kresh sleeve. “Excuse me, sera! I’m afraid I tripped.”

“Quite all right, muthsera,” Maissel answered quietly, steadying the girl with a hand on her bony elbow. He moved to continue on to the door, but Chana drew him off to the side by her grip on his sleeve.

“Do excuse me again, serjo, but is it still to your liking that I come by your home this Loredas to tidy up a bit?” She eyed the weave of his white sleeve shyly, smoothing it under her fine polished fingertips. “It has been over a month since you requested my service last; your home must be nearly unlivable by now.” Her black eyes flashed up through her lashes, then back down as she let go his sleeve and clasped her delicate wrists together behind her narrow waist.

Maissel smiled wryly down at the top of her head, with its neat part in its neat red hair, with a neatly tied bow gathering it back to show the long line of her neat little neck. “As I recall,” began the grey headed mer, “it was you who reminded me then, too, that my house stood in need of cleaning. Perhaps you forget, in your youth, that I have survived many years tending to my own domestic comforts?”

The head came up then, the wide black eyes fixed on the ironic smile across Maissel’s wide, dark lips. Midnight stained her smooth cheeks as she fell over herself to correct him. “Oh no sera, it’s not that, only I know you’re so busy - sometimesatleast – and can’t always take care of your home the way you would like and so I think it’s better if I do it for you as a kind of repayment for allyoudoforus. That’s all.”

Maissel chuckled lowly, grinning at the girl’s breathless anxious enthusiasm. “All right, all right! Come on Loredas, and make an old mer’s life a little brighter. I will see you then.” And with a pat of her arm he left her, with her blood pounding in the tips of her long ears at the touch of one of those wide calloused hands, her stomach quivering with his laughter, her eyes brimming over in ignorant animal hope.

The day was sunny, in the small courtyard outside the chapel, but brisk and bitter with winter’s stubborn teeth. A chill wind off the bay whipped Maissel’s old shirt and patched trousers against his lean body as he strode out through the arch in the courtyard’s walls, and into a mob. Or the beginnings of one, at the very least; the people of Vos, gathered together by the Affirmation, stood in a muttering ring in the village’s stone flagged plaza, arms crossed disapprovingly over chests as they scowled and stared toward the ring’s focus. And scowling at Maissel, too, as he approached, to his unruffled surprise. Then hands grabbed elbows, elbows dug into ribs, shoulders bumped shoulders, and the crowd parted before the chandler, and he understood.

An Ashlander stood there, in their town, calm as though she was in her own yurt instead of there on their plaza, breaking an unspoken treaty of decades. She was a girl, really, a plump little dimple cheeked thing with huge red eyes and blue black hair pulled in a tight bun above her head, fixed with polished bone pins. She stood there, stiff necked and proud, an unashamed cynosure in her traditional Velothi garb; the bulky kresh linen skirts hung with merrow reed rattles and woven nets, dried coda blooms and ampoule pods; the thin white blouse with its long fitted sleeves; the voluminous brown scarf draqed over her shoulders, hanging down her back and across her chest. She was very, very young, barely out of infancy, in fact, as mer counted things; perhaps fifteen seasons old.

Her round little chin rose as Maissel approached down the grim faced, flesh walled alley.

“You’re the one, I suppose,” said the girl as he halted on the flagstones before her. She eyed his loose clothes, his narrow shoulders, and his white hair with a contemptuous twitch to her mouth. “Mother said you were old, but she didn’t tell me you were grizzled.”

An angry ripple ran around the encircling onlookers, and there was a squawk like a netted cliffracer from behind Maissel where Chana stood with her mouth open, a buoyed boat suddenly ballasted. But the deep vertical lines running down the chandler’s weather beaten cheeks never changed, and his voice was calm when he answered.

“Perhaps we should withdraw, muthsera,” he grated quietly. “Business is better discussed at ease. There is mazte and merrow-meat, if I may show you to my home.”

“You may not,” said the girl, tossing her head. “I only wanted to see how the settled folk lived, and of that I have quite had my fill. We may discuss our village outside of your…village.” And without waiting for an answer, without even seeming to see the parting waves of Vos before her, she marched across the plaza, through the gate in the stonemold wall, and out of the larval little village. There was an approving cant to the faces of the villagers lining the way as Maissel followed; little though they would have liked hearing their home disparaged from a House Dunmer or from an outlander, they approved of it from Ashlanders. They had their way, and the tribes their own; it would be unnatural and disturbing for one to begin approving of the other. Perversely, the girl’s disdain was the only response that could have mollified the crowd. There was puzzlement, though, too, and disapproval. What had made the girl enter their stronghold instead of hovering politely at the edge as her parents and grandparents had so sensibly done? And why, why did their chandler treat with the barbarians so simply and easily? The question burned especially in the mind of poor husbandless Chana – how could her mer have invited that filthy little savage chit into the home she cleaned for him, offered her food the people of Vos had given him, from dishes her mother had made with her own hands? She was too young to know the formalities of business as practiced by a veteran craftsman, or to have been exposed to the importance of formality and ritual with the migrant peoples of Vvardenfell. In this, at least, she was alone; Vos’ other craftsmen might not have invited one into their homes had an Ashlander come seeking to trade, but they would certainly have provided proper victuals for the bargaining.

The girl led Maissel with swift, purposeful strides down the shabby, half cobbled road along the side of the great hill outside the village, her skirts whipping loudly and her round calves in their guar hide boots peeking out with each stride, not checking to see if he followed. When she stopped, she stopped abruptly, turning on her heel to face Maissel so quickly that she almost ended up with her face against his chest before he hurriedly put more distance between them. She eyed him up and down once more, sharply, then seated herself cross-legged on an outcropping of rough brown quartz by the edge of the road.

“So you are the settled mer we have relied on all these years,” she stated matter-of-factly, with much less arrogant venom on her tongue than she had spewed forth for Vos in its assembled entirety. “I am called Maela.”

“Harah’s daughter, I take it,” growled the chandler sourly. “I am Maissel Sarethi. What brings you, this year, instead of your mother? Perhaps she grew tired of treating with this old mer, and has foisted the duty onto you?”

“No,” answered Maela, “I volunteered. I wanted to see the settled people up close, for myself, instead of listening to more of mother’s three worded stories or the boastful lies of the Ashkhan and the gulakhans. And mother did not say you were old,” she added, in a softer tone, “she said you were the same age as she. It’s just that the two are functionally identical.”

Maissel grunted. “Indeed. Well. Shall we discuss business?”

“Of course we shall. Why do you think I am here?”

“From your behavior, girl,” Maissel growled, suddenly scowling fiercely down at Maela, “you are here to insult me and lose your tribe its partner in trade.”

Maela met his grim gaze unwaveringly for a long second, her smooth cheeks unruffled, then looked away, folding her hands in her lap.

“The Zainab are interested in providing you with certain raw materials in exchange for the products of your trade. Tell me, what do you have to offer in this bargain?”

The grey haired Dunmer eyed her weighingly, still slightly miffed with her behavior. He folded his arms over his chest carefully. “My craft is chandlery,” he said, “and that means I make candles.”

“Candles?” started the girl. “They are of but little value to my people. If that is all you can offer, then –“

“Listen, girl. I make candles, yes, but it’s much more than that. Fats are my craft, in truth, of all kinds animal or plant, and my products are all the things that come from fat. I can make you candles, though I know your people usually do not use them, and soap to remove the blight-bearing ash from your skin. I can provide the oils and waxes for your lamps and lanterns as well, and those for cooking and storage too. I can provide many goods to the Zainab, muthsera, but I think I know those most valuable to your people. Processed shalk resin, for the creation and repair of your weapons and armor; the wax of the scathecraw, for your waterskins and yurt hides; and of course soap, to keep your people healthy and clean. I have these things. What can you offer in return?”

Maela closed her mouth with an audible click. “The Zainab have much of value,” she answered – composedly, but the thin eyebrows that kept crawling back up her brow gave the lie, as did the reassessing light in her eyes. “The usual arrangement is to allow you to strip the fat from some of our guar when we butcher, is it not?”

Maissel nodded. “That it is. You have tanned hides, as well, from guar, nix, and netch. I can make use of these as well.”

“Then let us talk of numbers, if our agreement is clear? Soap, resin, oil and wax, in return for hides and the fat from our guar?” The Dunmer male nodded his head, narrow, straight nosed face impassive. “Good. Then make me an offer, fat man.”

The chandler shrugged his shoulders offhandedly. “I could provide – say, three casks of soap, three barrels each of cooking oil, lantern oil, and lamp wax, and a keg of shalk resin in exchange for thirty hides and the fat from all the beasts you butcher.”

“That is ridiculous!” exclaimed Maela, frowning prettily, an excited violet flush staining her cheeks. “You think because I am young, I do not know settled Dunmer’s tricks and manners when I see them? The three casks of soap, it is fine, but you must double the rest of your offer to even approach a trade I would be willing to make! Even then, I could only pledge ten hides and the fat of half our beasts.”

The mer scowled down at the dead golden wickwheat at the base of her rocky seat, shaking his head.

“You will drive me into destitution this way, and then where will your people be?”

The girl gave a rough snort, startlingly loudly. “Did I not just say that I know your tricks? You stolid ones all have secret caches of coin. Do not speak to me of destitution.”

“You think so, do you?” shot back the mer, a twitch at the corner of his wide dark lips. “Well, so the offer was not quite so bad as it seemed at first. Still not sweet enough! I can buy hides and fats from the sea traders, but to whom else can you turn for my skills? I am the only chandler this side of Red Mountain, unless you would brave the Ahemmusa and treat with the evil wizards in their fungus hives! You must make your trade my best option, or we will not do business. Doubling the goods is fine - you must have enough for your people’s needs – but you must give more as well. Twenty hides and the fat of all your beasts.”

Maela scowled up at him, black eyes hard. Her full lower lip came sliding out in a becoming pout, and Maissel had to stifle a sudden pang of mercy.

“Fine,” she huffed. “But make it fifteen hides; more, and my people will suffer less from the lack of your goods than from the lack of hide for our own use.”

The chandler pursed his lips thoughtfully, and the girl’s red eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Take the offer, old mer,” she hissed, “or to Oblivion with you and your fat!”

Maissel sighed. “Oh, very well then. You’ve got me. I agree.” He held out his palm.

“Good,” chirped Maela, suddenly cheerful. She placed her small, plump hand in his rough grey one. The image was ridiculous, in context; Maissel’s hands looked large and abnormally broad at the ends of his skinny wrists of any day, but with the girl’s smooth little hand curled in the center of his, the fingers limp and sleek with the shine of new Dunmer hide, his hand seemed like that of a giant, or the paw of one of those bears of which the outland books spoke. The sight was closer to a clasp of father and daughter than to equal parties in a negotiation; but the reality remained.

Maela reclaimed her hand. “The herdsmen are planning to butcher next Mondas, before the Salt-Mouth Velothi can arrive to steal our herds. You can make the delivery then; I’m sure you know where to go.” Perhaps she was sure, but she stood and turned regardless to the stone crowned heights behind her, to point to the low grey mounds of her tribe’s yurts erected atop it. “Meet there, when the time comes. The butchering will be done downwind of our camp.”

Maissel nodded gravely. “Of course. I will have your people’s goods at the ready. Until then, may you find all that you seek.”

“And you as well,” answered Maela perfunctorily, before turning once more on her heel and striding purposefully away around the side of the hill. Not, oddly enough, toward the narrow trail which led to the heights, but then perhaps she had other duties to perform before she returned. Whatever the case may have been, she might not have been quite so eager to depart or quite so stalwart in her contentment could she have seen the smile of surpassing satisfaction that split the Dunmer’s ashy face as he strode back through the village’s arched gateway. Certainly it unsettled the townsfolk, with the way it exposed the mer’s brilliant teeth like a wraith moon at midnight as he crossed the plaza where the people stood staring from the doorways of their encircling tan-gold houses. What kind of mercantile success could incite such predatorial voracity? Certainly it disturbed Chana where she spied from her post atop two stools, peering over the chapel courtyard’s wall, with the way it gathered the deep harsh lines of his tough skin in handfuls around his gleaming red eyes as he disappeared into his tower home hard by the chapel. What kind of depraved sorcery could an Ashlander chit like that work to incite such vivacity of expression? What danger had her headstrong would-be husband gotten himself into?

I have yet to read this, but may I suggest shortening the chapters. Not out of lazyness to read, but due to it scaring other potential readers away. It might be too intimidating. Not every person has the time to come online and read chapters this big.

But on the positive side, you have outstanding detail in your work: Namely town of Vos and the intro and the part where Maisell was being led by the girl. The story seems very promising indeed. Keep to it, friend, just remember the post count. But overall, don't be afraid to continue writing, after all, you are the author.

AN: Second section of part one; two more to go. This is a little shorter than the last, but that's not on purpose. I'm quite disinclined to shorten my chapters just so more people will read. But personally, I'm always thrilled to have longer chapters to read in fics. Thanks for the feedback, Werewolf&Vampire!

Part One: Vehk

Chapter II

Her skirts were caught on a dry scrub brush, the damned clumsy things. Winter was such a bad time for sneaking and climbing, at least for womer; skirts weren’t normally so cumbersome, but when it was cold out you wore layers, to stay warm, and that got bulky. Maela tugged herself free with a frustrated snarl and scrambled the last few steps up the steep slope to where the grey backs of her tribe’s yurts huddled around the rocky crest of the hill above Vos. She brushed the gravel from the front of her skirts quietly, crouched and hidden behind her mother’s wood-ribbed tent. Then, composing herself, she straightened up, strolling nonchalantly out from behind the oiled guar-hide, as though returning from a trip to the latrine. With luck, no one had noticed her absence or thought to check with the settled folk if they had, and the old fat-smith would be the one to reveal the favorable bargain she had made; it would be more effective that way. Her mother and the Ashkhan would have to listen to her, then, and she could finally establish a yurt of her own. And not with the Ashkhan; he and his gulakhans were all arrogant fools too fixated on the past and using the old ways to restore the glory of the Zainab to see that the only way they could be restored was through change. Besides, she was not going to be the one to bear the children of Shabael Rotten-Tooth, no matter how skilled he was with his lizard-kisses. If –

“Maela!”

The girl froze in mid step. It had been too much to hope. Folding her hands behind her, she turned slowly, a calm veneer over the sinking in her stomach.

“Yes, mother?”

Harah, Wise Woman of the Zainab, stood in the open entry to her unlit yurt, bony fists on her hips and a fearsome scowl on her face. She was a handsome womer, normally, with high cheekbones, fine lips, captivating almond eyes and few wrinkles for her age, but when she was angry her whole visage scrunched up into knots of fury that made her look like one of Azura’s cold twilight hags. So it was then; a narrow eyed bird of prey with muscles twitching along its jawline, peering out from the sheltered eyrie-cowl wrapped around her mother’s head.

“Ooooooh, do not give me your tricksome innocence, girl!” her mother howled down at her.

“Tricksome?” replied the girl, frowning in affront. “But mother, I have just been about gathering some herbs to season tonight’s stew. These settled folk do not make good use of their-“

“Oh, but you are an impertinent girl!” hissed Harah. “To try to feed me this unlikely tail when I know your headstrong deceptive ways inside and outside, when I have just endured the jeers and humiliating insinuations of the settled folk! I go down to their houses, wait politely outside as I have always done, for the fat-smith to come, and what am I told? I am told that the settled folk have had enough of the Zainab, that what business we may have had has been concluded! And what do they tell me, when I ask who has done this? ‘One of your youths,’ they say, and issue a prettily perfect description of my own man-fat daughter! What have you done, girl?!”

Innocence oozed off Maela’s face like a wax mask, replaced with a sullen pouting frown. “I am not fat like a human, you caustic old hag,” she muttered under her breath. “You simply envy me my curves.”

Her mother’s eyes popped, like blood blisters, and for a moment it seemed she would choke on her own indignation. A brief second to compose herself; when she went on, it was in a more even tone, and her features were smooth.

“That would be strange indeed, for a mother to envy her child,” she said coolly, “especially when it is a strong, hardy womer that any respectable mer desires. But you are attempting to divert me, Maela; do not think your intentions opaque. You will now tell me what it was you did in the village today.”

Her daughter scowled, and stared resentfully at the rocky ground, but answered without hesitation.

“I negotiated our trade with their fat-smith,” she said.

Harah’s eyebrows rose. “And what were the terms of your agreement?”

Maela told her.

Her mother’s eyes shot to the sky as she pressed a palm to her forehead. “Oh, my fathers,” she whispered tiredly, “why have you laid this headstrong daughter upon me? You have been taken in, Maela,” she said, looking down at her reprovingly. “The fat from all the beasts we butcher? I would have asked for three times as much, for rights so extensive, and the Zainab would have had soaps to trade to the noisome Erabenimsun, and enough extra from the rest to make a journey west to the Urshilaku profitable as well. You have let the fat-smith steal our livelihood as surely as the Salt-Mouth Velothi would do.”

The girl’s pretty little chin dropped. “He tricked me?” she gasped. “But – but – I bargained him down! I had him caught! That old – old wick-waxer!” she spat.

Her mother laid a comforting arm around her stiff and unresponsive shoulders. “Well, it is the way of things, and no shame in the mer’s actions; we do the same, and have great glee in it, when a new trader is chosen by the Urshilaku or Erabenimsun.” The cutely flared nose of her daughter issued no pardons. “The fat-smith is more cut-throat than the rest of his kind; I have always found it so. A sharp head is needed to deal with that one. Had you asked me of these things before running off to impoverish the Zainab, you may have been savvier to the mer’s wiles.” The two exchanged glances, sullen and admonitory respectively. “Now, I cannot say what will happen. The Zainab cannot let such a disgrace stand, but it would also be shameful to reveal your ill-advised presumption; we must uphold your deal, to our cost.”

“And you must go before the Ashkhan!” she went on, suddenly vehement as she released her daughter. “Stay in here,” she said, pushing her by her scarfed shoulders into the dark interior of the yurt. “I must converse with the Ashkhan and his gulakhans before he can see you. Do not leave!” she hissed suspiciously through the gap, to the sullen nod of her foiled merchant daughter, and she let loose the roll of hide tied above the entrance, then staked it firmly into the ground.

And so Maela was left in the stuffy yurt, with its rib cage of wooden struts beneath and through the stretched hides, its layered kresh rug floor, its ancestral homespun tapestries hanging above the bedrolls; left to stew in her own shame and anger, a dumpling ascending to sumptuousness by simmering in a seasoned sauce. Harah gathered the ink encircled gulakhans from where they crouched in oversight of the grazing guar herd in the valley to the west; led them to their leader, Ashkhan Shabael Al-Kaushad, a dragon in skirts captaining a flight of cliffracers, descending upon a moon sugared king. They closeted themselves in the smoky gloom of the Ashkhan’s yurt, to chew the fat-smith quandary. So did Maela chew her plump underlip in her stewpot capped confines, in turn steaming and boiling the chandler in her over pressurized skull. And it went on that way, chewing and stewing, boiling and steaming in the dark yurts, and also in the camp outside as the voices of the closeted council bubbled over into the tribe’s communal ears, until the sun tiptoed away behind Red Mountain and the rocky hilltop was in general a great effervescing froth.

At last the council broke; the yurt strings untied, the broad shouldered, weak-minded scions of Zainab emerged into the dusk with ancestor-honored Shabael and his Wise Woman. Their faces were unreadable as they seated themselves in a semicircle outside the Ashkhan’s yurt, beneath the khanumbra, the hide overshield stretched on ash wood frames over the circular gathering of khan-yurts. The questions of the tribe were answered, as the Zainab assembled before their leaders beneath its obscuring shelter, at the northernmost edge of the hilltop, the highest point. The people were satiated, at least from the pangs of curiousity, and when their pangs of hunger had likewise been satiated upon steamed ash yams and nix flesh stew, broiling Maela was brought to face trial beneath the khanumbra.

The fire had died low, a glowing ember bed, crackling and glowing, ringed by blackened flat-faced stones. The tribe was gathered, watching silently from the shadows between the yurts. The tribe’s council watched her across the fire, seated cross legged on the layered rugs around the fire. There was Derch, the right horn of the crescent, in baggy netch leather trousers and his kagouti hide vest, a mushroom gourd bowl of stew in his hands as he watched her impassively. Kanly headed the other horn, weak chinned Kanly with his chitin bow still lashed across his back, and to the left Naib, intimidating in his bonemold cuirass. Grizzled old El-Sayal sat to Derch’s right, Harah and Ashkhan Shabael Kaushad in the center. They made an opposing sight, those emaciated mer with their dark, greenish, glass-dust tattoos encircling their biceps, splotching their chests and blanketing their cheeks in ritual symbols and lines of ancestor text.

But Maela knew better. None of them were as dangerous as they made themselves out. Derch’s vest had come from a crippled old sow, found half dead already after an attack of blighted racers, not from the hide of the juvenile scourge pack male he claimed it to be in front of the other tribes. Naib’s briastplate was genuine bonemold, but it was not a genuine bonemold briastplate; Naib had found the thing shattered on the corpse of a Redoran warrior. The thing was a fa?ade, the pieces fixed with resin across the front of his normal chitin cuirass. The bow Kanly carried was mostly an affectation; if his arrow made the mark, the tides of chance were high. As for El-Sayal, the mer was only a gulakhan because he was still alive and fit to hold a spear after two hundred and fifty years of harsh living… and he was only alive because he was a conniving coward.

And the Ashkhan, Shabael Kaushad? The tribe said he had the blessings of the ancestors; he must, for the number of times he had returned safely from the Zainab burial grounds with a token of the ancestors’ favor; but Maela said he only happened to visit their forefathers when another of his teeth fell out. His was not such a sorry case as those of his gulakhans, it is true; he was a just mer, not even too stupid as those things were reckoned for males, but he was not the ferociously indomitable warrior his grandfather, Kaushad Uroshnor, had been, back when the Zainab were still strong. More respectable and honorable than any of the settled folk, of course, as were all of his gulakhans arranged under the khanumbra, in the star pricked winter night. Their faces were orange and black, craggy in the light of the fire and of the paper lanterns hanging above. The wind gusted, the flames guttered, marshmerrow reeds rattled above, and the Ashkhan began.

“You have managed to cause the Zainab a great deal of trouble once more, Maela,” came the mer’s deep, grating voice. His face was masked in shadow, only the red glowing gleam of his eyes visible. He folded his muscular arms over his chest, the light glinting dully from the green tattoos ringing his wrists and biceps. He wore a thin tan shirt without sleeves, with no vest or scarf - to show his hardiness in the cold air - and thick hide trousers hung with racer plumes and bone rattles. “What have you to say for yourself? Why have you put the Zainab in this situation?”

Maela lowered her eyes coyly, hanging her head and running a hand up her other arm, as though ashamed and bashful under the Ashkhan’s eyes… and the rest of the tribe’s as well, of course.

“It was never my intention to embarrass the Zainab in this way, Ashkhan Shabael,” she answered quietly, looking up through her long lashes to the dark gleam of the mer’s eyes. “My intent was merely to gain experience and knowledge for my betterment and the betterment of the tribe.”

Harah stirred restlessly, adjusting her skirts over her knees at the Ashkhan’s side, but remained silent. A bark of laughter came from the veil of shadow over the Ashkhan’s face.

“The betterment of the Zainab, was it? Not the satiation of your own curiousity?”

The girl’s dimpled cheeks flushed violet, but her chin rose and she faced the mer with her shoulders squared and her pretty features stubborn in the nest of her scarf.

“And what right do you – or my mother – have to prevent me from learning of the rest of Morrowind?” she demanded hotly; the tactic had shifted from coquetry to fierceness of spirit.

“The right of kin and clan, daughter,” put in her mother dryly, “but that is not why we are here. We are here to discuss the damage you have caused to the tribe’s livelihood, and how we intend to mitigate those damages… your punishment notwithstanding.”

“Indeed,” said the Ashkhan gravely. “We have pondered these things long in counsel, and now I will pass judgment. Have you anything else you wish to say in your defense?”

Maela met his hidden eyes unblinkingly. “Only that it should be remembered that boldness is key to strength. I have boldness, but sometimes I think that my people do not.”

“Watch your words, girl,” growled Derch, leaning forward in the crackling firelight, elbows on his knees. “You belittle true warriors.”

“Be quiet,” snapped the Ashkhan, suddenly terse. His black profile glared toward his gulakhan. “Your speech was not requested.” The kagouti vested warrior flushed in embarrassment as he bent from the waist in a bow, muttering apologies, and Maela had to suppress a small grin. That was one thing she liked in Shabael; he kept his warriors tightly under his thumb. He also tended to get pugnacious and territorial when any other mer even spoke to her; that was one thing she most certainly did not like, insomuch as it limited her freedoms.

“I will begin with the statement of sins,” continued Shabael. The fists resting clenched on his knees brooked no more interruptions; he had not been insensible himself to Maela’s barb. “Firstly; you have transgressed against the strictures of the Zainab through unsanctioned association with the settled folk. Secondly; you have brought yourself into personal degradation through this same association. Thirdly; you have brought disgrace to the ancestors by willfully disobeying your mother’s explicit command. And fourthly; you have brought disgrace to the Zainab by allowing one of the tricksome house dwellers to finagle you into a most unsatisfying bargain. So stand your transgressions as the council has seen them.”

With each statement a low rumble ran through the Ashlander onlookers as heads swiveled disapprovingly and harsh mer mouths turned firmly downward. Ashlanders were not forgiving folk. But Maela stood undisturbed at the focus of their displeasure, a figure of dignity in her bulky skirts and scarf, too stubborn and arrogant to be anything less.

“These are not light transgressions,” said Shabael, stern red eyes glowing. “They cannot go unpunished. But before your judgment is passed, let those things in your favor be stated as well. The first is perhaps the most significant: your youth.” He paused hesitatingly, perhaps anticipating some response; and indeed Maela’s features were fast storming over. As her mother became a twilight hag in fury, so did Maela don her Mask Perilous. Her large red eyes had shot wide open like the heart of the storms over Dagoth Ur, her nostrils flared and pressed in ashy white ridges. Her full lips were pursed tightly together as though for a kiss, but it would be a bravehearted mer who dared capture the lips of Maela’s Mask Perilous. Shabael continued hurriedly, eager to mitigate the insult.

“This is less of an excuse in our council’s mind than it might be found by an uninformed gathering. Though the settled folk would consider you too young even to truly make informed decisions volitionally, the Zainab are made from stronger stock than the house dwellers; we are well aware that Harah’s daughter has never been anything less than fully sentient and has only ever gone against her will under forceful coercion.” The Mask was unrelenting. “This well in mind, the council still finds your youth and inexperience to lessen the severity of your crime. Somewhat.”

“Less influential is your ambition and purported care to your people’s welfare. Still, these things are desirable traits in our youth, and must be rewarded. They stand to your credit.”

“So my judgment stands thusly; you have acted in foolishness, and so brought much shame and trouble to us, but your intent was good, and you are young and headstrong by nature. You shall be punished, but the matter will be left between you and your mother. Knowing, as I do,” he went on dryly as the Mask Perilous drained from Maela’s face with her suddenly chilled blood, “that my Wise Woman can be trusted to enact a punishment that sees justice fulfilled.”

That got chuckles from the gulakhans and the watching Zainab, a tight smile from Harah and an outright cackle from old hag-faced Muri. Maela’s mother was not normally harsh, in her punishments or in her words despite the frequency of her clashes with her strong willed daughter, but she took more seriously the punishments she meted out in the name of her clan, and that made it another matter entirely; she had been a child in the last year of the Wise Woman Khala’s sadomasochistic reign, and took inspiration for her punishments from personal experience.

“Judgment has been passed,” finished the Ashkhan, sounding infuriatingly self-satisfied. “Let us pass on; the council discussed else besides your crimes. Of more import is how the Zainab can avoid most of the shame of your bargain, and perhaps inflict some back upon the fat-smith. We believe we have found a way, nested in the wording of your bargain.”

And Maela was given yams and stew and allowed to depart from the communal focus in smarting acceptance of her fate, while the tattooed warriors spoke beneath the khanumbra and the clouded black sky, illuminating to the people the plan Harah had slipped into their minds. The cold wind gusted, rattling the dried marshmerrow reeds hanging amidst the yurts, stirring the paper lanterns, the embers of the dozing fire and the tiny translucent hairs across Dunmer skins. It wafted the sulfurous stench from above the cleft-well at the center of the heights, and the smell was of shame and revenge.

AN: Short one. Next one will be loooong.

Part One: Vehk

Chapter III

The chandler's was a simple house, and ancient, like every dwelling in Vos. It had adjoined the chapel originally, when the Temple garrisoned a few Ordinators and Buoyant Armigers in the village during its vulnerable nascent years. Though the warriors were gone, the place still served as barracks and guard tower when the Ashlanders appeared with spears in their hands. The outline of the doorway to the chapel could still be seen in the wall of the small, square ground floor, blocked up with stonemold over a wooden frame and hidden behind a threadbare tapestry of the Tribunal. Other tapestries, in dull golds, greens, and greys, decorated the walls as threadbare rugs covered the mortar and stone floors, but there was a last-generational air about all of it. It was clear, somehow, that they remained by ancestral privilege, not by Maissel's inclination. The mer was, in fact, almost Imperially militaristic in the simplicity of his living arrangements. Nowhere were there cushions on the rickety elm wood chairs; not to be seen was a novel or book of poetry, not even that might have been left by a Vehk-spired Armiger long ago, only holy texts of the Three; nonexistent were the vased stoneflowers and twined anther on the mantel, except in the glowing visions lodged in Chana's eyes. It was a place of factorial asceticism, devoted to the chandler's work above all domestic comforts.

It was the best and worst environment imaginable for Chana. The house's many voids left her almost limitless spaces to fill with her inventions; there would go the decorative glazed crockery of her grandmother, filled with flowers over the mantel; there would hang the fresh new tapestries from Irisea's loom; there would she sit nursing Maissel's babe by the fire. But it left her little recourse except invention when it came to house cleaning. He was a tidy mer; swept the floor, shook the rugs, wiped down the table and shelves, folded the thin blanket on his hard bed roll, and always, always, polished his tools after working. Chana could dust the walls a bit, polish the silver, maybe tidy up the stacks of redware dishes in their humble hutch, but it was never very long before she was forced to imaginative and time consuming unnecessities to prolong her visit.

Usually it was the table. Maissel had a great, famous table as centerpiece in the small ground floor, and it never failed but that the sheen was not quite satisfactory, the polish just the slightest bit worn, and Chana would be forced to oil it up anew. It was a stout, thick thing, a family heirloom of uncertain origin and famous for its construction; it was made from the swirl grained mushroom wood of the Telvanni sorcerers. Nobody knew how the Sarethis had come by it, long ago - for no one dared injure one of the giant mushroom trees, for fear that the wizards would take offense. But it had been a point of pride for the household's wives for centuries, and had embedded itself once more in the heart of the Hetman's daughter. It was conveniently situated, as well, in the center of the small living room on the ground floor, perfect for keeping Maissel in her sight - and she in his - when his work was not noisome enough to keep him in the cellars or on the roof. Gallons of red-brown scathecraw grease she must have worked into the gleaming grain with her tireless rag over the long first years of her unfruitful, unannounced, unnoticed courtship, till it seemed a wonder that the wood did not drip like a ripe comberry, full up and sated as it was with warm, smooth oil. But she worked it still, rubbing her rag with meticulous care over the gleaming surface that Loredas, as Maissel had promised she could.

The grey haired mer sat on a stool by the cold hearth, carefully watching the evaporative progress of the steaming contraption placed before him. It was of Dwemer make, this thing, and had a fat belly supported by three stout curved legs in gold-bronze Dwemer metal. Blue flames burst forth from the reservoir's round top, licking the bottom of the large cast iron pot set atop. The pot was filled with boiling water, and in it rested a large glass bulb with a long spout.

It was all very strange, and Chana threw glance after obviously curious glance at the bizarre arrangement - from where did the flame come, with no wood? - and at the broad mouthed dark face wreathed in steam above it, before the owner felt sufficiently prompted to explain.

"It is a kind of stove," he grunted suddenly. "The kind the Dwemer used."

"Oh!" squeaked Chana, her heart doing a slaughterfish leap at his gravelly voice. "I see. But where does the flame come from, serjo?"

Maissel shrugged, red eyes back on the contents of the glass bulb in the frothing water. "You ask me to explain the workings of the Deep Ones? I understand it no more than you; I know only what my father taught me. Lamp oil in here," he said, tapping the belly, "spark to light, and seal to extinguish." He indicated a thick lid that swiveled away from the top of the reservoir, between it and the pot atop.

"I see, sera. That is not so hard."

"No," agreed Maissel.

Quiet descended again on the little slant walled room, but it did not last long. The chandler's initiation of conversation, however fleeting, had emboldened Chana. It was not the mysterious little machine that weighed on her mind.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question, serjo?" she said, tentatively. She watched his impassive face through the swirling steam as her rag arm flagged.

His dark lips quirked. "If I did, I should be already offended by your first. But I do not," he added kindly, seeing the dismay on her face, "so ask what you will."

Chan gulped nervously. "Thank you. I was just wondering... what was it you discussed with that Ashlands girl who was here, a few days back?"

Maissel shrugged. "Just business. Trade for my goods."

"The Ashlanders send children to negotiate trade?" replied Chana with a frown.

"Not usually," answered the chandler. "I am accustomed to dealing with the girl's mother. I do not know why it was not she, this year. Perhaps she has fallen ill, or chosen to train her daughter as her apprentice. The girl did not give me a true explanation."

Chana nodded mutely, her soft eyes thoughtful in her bony face, and went back to her table rubbing. Only a few seconds had passed when she suddenly stopped, straightening up with her hands on her hips and a look of puzzlement, and almost hurt, on her face.

"Why do you work for them?"

Maissel looked up from his work, struck with surprise. "Why do I work for them?" he repeated after a pause. "The same reason I work for your father, or anyone else in the village; because it benefits us both. The Zainab have no craftsmen for my kind of work, so trading with me keeps them more clean and comfortable than they could be otherwise. And as they supply me with raw materials, I am able to produce more candles and soaps and everything else. You know, of course, that what I produce and the village does not use goes to the Temple for sale and supply to the poor. All are thus benefited by my trade with the Zainab." He looked away, examining the boiling bulb once more.

Chana bit her lip thoughtfully, turning the scheme over in her mind. "But why don't the Zainab have a chandler of their own?" she said, puzzledly.

"I do not know," answered the chandler. "They never have, in my lifetime nor my father's. He used to say that my grandfather said that there was a chandler amongst the Zainab in his youth, but that they were so embarrassed by the Sarethi skill that they abandoned their craft." He shrugged. "I suppose grandfather may have been exaggerating a bit. Perhaps the chandler was killed in a raid by one of the other tribes, and had not trained an apprentice. I do not know."

"Such a long time to go without a chandler," she said coyly, casting her black eyes at him through her lashes. "I can't imagine going so long without fresh oil when I needed it." Maissel did not respond, and the young womer went on in a slightly stymied tone. "Why do you think they have not sought a new chandler of their own?"

"Most likely because it is not such an easy craft to learn, in these parts," muttered Maissel. "Too few of us around, and the Zainab are too proud to go looking to learn anything from one of us 'settled folk'. Also I have made it quite attractive, over the years, for them to employ my services instead." He spoke in a preoccupied way, peering close to the boiling pot to see within the glass bulb, beads of hot water condensing on his thin eyebrows, hanging perilously from the tip of his narrow nose. Something must have changed within, for he straightened abruptly to his feet and lifted the glass clear of the water by its long spout. The bulb was filled with flaky bits of white and iridescent blue material suspended in clear fluid above a thick layer of something viscous and cloudy. The chandler gave the glass a vigorous swirl, mixing the two layers thoroughly, and then set it aside on the floor, leaning against the hearth. He resumed his seat.

Chana watched him longingly, wringing her rag in her skinny hands. Oil dripped silently to the stone tiles.

"What was her name?" she burst out suddenly.

Maissel turned his shaggy grey head slowly to the girl, standing there with her narrow hips and long neck, her suggestively tight blouse and thin skirt, her sweet eyes in the craggy face that was only homely on first glance.

"The Ashlands girl, I mean. You didn't mention her name."

"Her name is Maela," he said, "daughter of Harah, Wise Woman of the Zainab Ashlanders."

And with no further extrapolation he snatched the glass bulb from the floor and carried it away down the warm wooden stairs to his long cellar workshop, where its settled contents would be strained and further purified. He left the Hetman's daughter above to console her unreasoning misgivings with not-so-farfetched imaginings, to rub her palms lovingly across the smooth mushroom wood table, to fill the ascetic voids of the chandler's home with the coziness of her simple peasant dreams.

AN: Ok, so not that long. Warning: some limited gore ahead.

Part One: Vehk

Chapter IV

Morndas dawned grey and cold, the winds whipping the dead grasses of the rocky hills in circling, swirling gusts. The skies were skimmed with a layer of thin, fruitless clouds, pale and flat as slate, and through this murky lens the sunlight was shattered, parceled out through the air in a diffuse haze. They were otherwise clear, though, those skies; no circling racer flights in the distance, and the storms had abated over Red Mountain as they still sometimes did in those days.

Vos looked almost vacant in that day suffused with daze, all doors and windows shut, the villagers tidily closed up against the stinging cold. All except Maissel in his loose, whipping clothes, gathering his goods together in the echoing plaza. He had borrowed the Andas’ old guar, Hermy, to help haul the delivery up to the Zainab, and the beast was there in the plaza with him, hitched docilely between the arms of Maissel’s small cart. From the creature’s drooped head and sagging eyelids, it looked to be dozing off where it stood; it was fairly typical for guar, in the winter, especially among the older beasts.

They were strange things, guar. One of Morrowind’s many unique species born out of the proximity of transmogrative Red Mountain, they were reptilian, and sluggish when cold. But they were unlike any reptile the rest of Tamriel knew; they had pale, tan hides, almost like those of the Cyrodiils, only tougher, with tiny pebbly scales here and there. Like the alit and kagouti, Morrowind’s vicious, monstrous predators, the guar walked on two hind legs, a loping lopsided creature with no neck and an enormous domed head hanging far forward of the rest of its body, balanced only by its thick, rudder like tail. Misleading; guar could not swim. Its feet were large, with soft leathery pads on their three toes and huge, blunt nails. But unlike the alit and kagouti, which were in truth just gigantic toothed maws on legs, the guar retained two more limbs, tiny vestigial forearms that could do little except flail helplessly.

They were awkward beasts at best, though not hindered by it for the most part. When they ran, their entire body rolled from one side to the other, teetering precariously on whichever leg the guar happened to be balancing on at any particular moment – but they rarely fell down, even in Vvardenfell’s rough terrain. Unless they were pushed, of course. They had another unfortunate feature, as well; the shallow lower jaw, studded with blunt, rounded teeth, protruded a good few inches beyond the upper jaw, giving the guar a jeering grin, made more endearing by its wide head and tiny, docile eyes. Nobody knew, exactly, for what the guar used this shelf-like jaw; the popular opinion was that it let the dumb beasts guzzle more liquor at once from the mazte stills into which the so often broke.

Maissel ran an eye one last time over the contents of his cart as he patted Hermy’s huge broad head. Three rough wooden crates full of pinkish squares of rough soap, perfumed with willow anther and wrapped in rice paper; six fat barrels filled with cooking oil extracted from the scathecraw plant, six more for the burning of lanterns, sealed tight with red wax; six redware crocks filled with semisolid shalk wax, for the bug lamps of the Ashlanders, and a small keg of tan, powdered resin from the same insect. All in order according to his most profitable bargain with that foolish young girl. It made a large pile, all together; he’d had to fetch ropes and lash down the topmost burdens. Maissel took a hand from the hilt of one of the knives sheathed at his belt to slap the guar’s back sharply and get him moving, and the beast shivered to full awareness.

He slid a startled, reproving look to the chandler, as well, as he took that first slow step and felt the measure of the cart’s burdens; he was mostly not expected to do much work, anymore. He set to it, though, grunting and lowing at first as though bemoaning the trials of life, and the two set off through the cold morning, out of the empty village and up the rocky path to the steep heights where the Zainab yurts waited.

A line of Zainab themselves waiting too, the chandler saw as Hermy pulled the clattering cart bumpily over the last few rocks onto the plateau. They had been watching, forbidding figures in their pale chitin armor, their racer plume ornaments and black-green tattoos, barbed spears and notched bows in their hands, silhouetted against the pale grey sky. One stepped forward, a bulky mer in a kagouti hide vest with a wide jaw almost like that of the creature from which his vest had come, a spear planted in the rocky ground clasped in his fist. He bent his neck stiffly.

“Greetings, fat-smith,” he said gravely as Maissel bowed his head in return. “I am Derch, gulakhan of the Zainab people. The Zainab are ready to trade.”

“Greetings, honored gulakhan,” answered Maissel. “I am Maissel Sarethi. I have goods, according to my bargain with your people.” He waved a broad hand to the cart behind him.

A careless smile flashed across Derch’s wide face. “Of course,” he grated. “Bring your guar among our yurts, and the Zainab will make good on their end of the bargain.” He turned away, and Maissel followed him into the camp, Hermy at his back and the rest of the watching Ashlanders filing silently in behind the cart.

Pricklings of unease pierced the chandler’s cool as they passed between the yurts toward the center of camp. There was something… not quite right. The negotiation he had made with the girl had not been to the tribe’s favor, and the Zainab were too proud to swallow something like that easily – so why were they all so calm and even… amused?

They halted together when they reached the camp’s heart, before the rocky cleft that was the deep well down to the mineral spring the Zainab used when water was scarce. There was a space of rocky ground left clear there; the tribe’s grey, guar hide yurts, with their wooden frames and hanging rattles of dried marshmerrow reeds, the simple rugs spread before their entrances, the storage urns stacked by their sides, looked on from their withdrawn circle.

“Unload this mer’s wares,” said Derch, his voice loud to carry to the entire tribe, “and bring him his payment!”

There was a sudden flurry of activity as Ashlanders appeared from the dark confines of their homes and converged on the chandler’s cart, untying ropes and shouldering the barrels, kegs, and crates as they carried the load away with great efficiency to the tribe’s common storage hut. They moved with grace, and poise, those rawboned mer and womer, even with their burdens; they were all used to heavy labor in their nomad camp. Their eyes were more often red than black, as was not so in Vos, but those eyes did not touch Maissel; they slid around him like oil on water, unseeing and careless. The mer stood with arms crossed, watching the work silently as he always did among the Ashlanders, a slim still figure looking weak and soft with just his butcher’s knives, so hard by the grim tribal Dunmer and their weapon bristled belts. Though he looked, Maela was nowhere to be seen in all the activity.

Two young mer appeared out of the crowd, bearing a large roll of tanned hides under their arms.

“Here is the first part of your payment,” growled Derch quietly at Maissel’s side. “Should we unroll them, for you to inspect our work?”

Maissel shook his head quickly. “I have trust in the quality of the Zainab’s work,” he said politely.

Derch nodded, and gestured to the two mer to leave the roll in the cart when it had been fully unloaded, but there was a sudden nasty curl to his lip, as though a morsel of contempt had crawled down his throat. It had vanished, however, by the time he turned back to the chandler.

“Then let us proceed,” he said. “The butchering is already in progress.”

He led the chandler away from his cart, between the yurts and down a narrow switch-backed trail against the steep western edge of the hill. The herdsmer were busy there, on a large ledge halfway to the valley bottom below, farm from the milling guar herds grazing there, to avoid spooking the animals with their work. High wooden frames had been erected on the ledge, and two dead guar, their throats slit and the blood drained into a large barrel to be used later with scrib jelly and kwama cuttle in varota, traditional Velothi blood pudding, hung up by their ankles. Between the frames, a broad flat rock like a table stood, waist high and covered with the chitin blades of the Ashlanders.

Kagouti-jawed Derch bowed slightly to Maissel as they gained the ledge. The two herdsmer butchers – taciturn old veterans Maissel had worked with for years and still could not put names to – turned briefly from their work to nod politely to Maissel and respectfully to Derch.

“I will leave you to your work, fat-smith,” said Derch, his face unreadable. “When you have finished, I will have some of our people assist you in carrying your payment to your cart. No charge.”

“My thanks,” answered the chandler quickly. Derch nodded, and vanished back up the trail to the crowning camp above.

Maissel unsheathed one of the long steel knives hanging at his belt and crouched down casually on his heels near the edge of the ledge, where he could watch both the progress of the butchering and the fields below as he worked his oiled whetstone across the knife’s edge. His part was not yet come; the Zainab herdsmer had not yet even skinned these first two beasts, nor divided the corpses so that he could extract the fat. He could do those parts of the job himself, of course, but the Zainab were always touchy. Perhaps they thought that peeling fat from muscle did not mean that he could do the same with skin. They did not want holes in their hides from incompetence, and he supposed he could not blame them.

He watched the butchers work awhile as they slit the skins carefully up the center of the chest, starting from the incisions they had made in the throat for slaughter, then switched to their round headed skinning knives and began revealing from the tails down the pink white innards of the beasts. His attention wandered quickly, though, from the feats he had seen and done so many times over the years.

His eyes drifted westward, to the Zainab herds grazing in the valley below. More Zainab watched over the guar from the surrounding hills; the guar were trained not to wander, but the Grazelands were full of predators eager to feast on the hapless guar. A look out was enough for safety, though, with a bow. No use penning the beasts anyway; a fully grown kagouti could break through anything less than a stone wall with ease. The villagers penned their guar, but only at night. As far as Maissel knew, Ashlanders never did except to isolate out individuals for butchering; those chosen had to be fasted for a few days beforehand to make sure their bladders were empty when they were killed. The other beasts for butcher would be cloistered away still that day, but, come to think of it, he could not see any… the herd looked quite large still…

He shot to his feet, jaw suddenly tight. He knew. There were no other guar penned for butcher. His fist clenched around the wooden hilt of his knife.

“Something wrong, sera?”

It was a womer’s voice; Harah, the Wise Woman, in black skirts and a long matching draqe pinned across her shoulders, watching him from a short way up the path to the ledge with a satisfied smile on her lips that made her look a great deal like her daughter.

A muscle twitched by Maissel’s eye. “Where are the other animals the Zainab intend to butcher, muthsera?” he grated, lava eyes staring.

The womer shrugged her shoulders innocently. “There are no other animals,” she answered blithely. “The Zainab have chosen to butcher just two beasts at this time.”

Maissel grimaced at her, sheathing his knife violently. “You are very sly, Wise Woman,” he muttered as he turned away to watch the butchers, who were grinning to each other as they worked.

“Oh, you have my daughter to thank, sera,” she said gloatingly to his back. “It was she who offered you such a fine bargain!”

The chandler made no reply, though his wide lips tightened even further, and after a few seconds the Wise Woman’s footsteps echoed over the ledge as she returned to the camp. He watched in silence, arms crossed tightly over his chest, as the butchers split the skinned corpses up the stomach, removing the multiple bladders and long pale intestines, fishing out the polished black ashstones from the detritus of the gizzard, and finally sectioning the whole body into manageable masses of meat.

He began his work, cold and silent, as soon as the first severed white tail hit the stone table. His twin knives whipped from their scabbards and set to smooth work, incising neatly down the center of each tail to the fat encased core of muscle and vertebrae, so it could be ripped away and discarded by hand. They worked steadily as the butchers added more and more of the sectioned guar to the table. They cut the hard suet away from the loins, eased the thick fatback from each section of spine, cracked the huge domed skull’s bottom to get to the semisolid white jelly surrounding the tiny brain, but the real feat was in the fine work, the extraction of the lines of lard marbled through the muscle. They danced in tandem, slithering between fat and muscle until every last scrap of lipidinous tissue had been stripped from the two beasts. Normally, Maissel would have left some of the marbling for the Zainab to eat when they roasted the meat, but normally they would have butchered nearly ten times the guar as they did that day, and normally he would not have been in a silent rage.

When he was done, the stone was piled with a pinkly glistening white mound; the fat of all the guar the Zainab had butchered, as per Maissel’s barbed agreement with young Maela. In all, his work took him perhaps one half of an hour, once he began. He was very good at what he did; he had been doing it for over a century and a half.

“Fetch your carriers,” he said as he set his knives aside and began sorting the fats by type with his bare hands. “And have them bring an urn or two.” The two old herdsmer exchanged dubious glances, and Maissel shot them a hard look over his shoulder. “It is little to ask, I think.” They looked at each other again, then nodded slowly. “Appreciated,” said Maissel grimly, returning to his work. “I will be washing up below when you return.”

The Ashlanders vanished up to the camp, and Maissel quickly finished segregating his fats into separate groups by type; not all fat was the same, after all, and not all fats could be used for every purpose. That done, he snatched up his bloody curved knives in his broad, sticky hands, and followed further the narrow path off the ledge a few more switches toward the bottom, where a small trickling stream of sulfur scented water sprung from the side of the hill with a quiet tinkle. He crouched down, washing the blood from his blades and from his hands, and letting his shame and frustration pass from him in the quiet chill. Working the fat had helped, as well; the chandler was always soothed by his work. He could not blame the Zainab too much for their tricks. After all, he had attempted himself to exploit the girl’s seeming innocence. She had proven herself far less inexperienced than she appeared, though.

He straightened up, sheathing his clean knives at his waist, brushing his wet hands dry on his trousers, and without warning there came a loud yell, and a large, lumpy projectile landed with a thwump on Maissel’s back.

“Arrrrgh!” he growled, as he fell forward, his chest slamming into the rocky path. The padded something was flailing about on his back, attempting to pin his hands. He gave a great flail with his entire body, though, and the thing was jarred loose, falling hard to the side with a grunt. Maissel scrambled to his feet, fumbling at his belt for his knives, but the thing beat him to it, and the thing was Maela.

“You sneaky s’wit!” she hissed as she fisted her hands in Maissel’s shirt and shoved him hard against the steep rocks of the hill. Her hair was in disarray, wisps wildly loose from the bun atop her head, and her plump cheeks were flushed a heady violet, but otherwise she looked exactly the same as she had before.

“You tried to trick me!” she went on, her voice low and her round nose maybe an inch from Maissel’s thin straight one. “You think because I am young, I am foolish and inexperienced?”

“At the moment,” growled Maissel hotly, “that is exactly what I think you.” The twin points of his knives pricked through the fabric of her blouse below her briasts warningly.

Maela blinked, red eyes wide with shock in her dimpled, blue-grey face. Then she released her grip on Maissel’s shirt and backed cautiously away, her hands held open before her.

“You are very quick, for a settled mer,” she said quietly as Maissel sheathed his blades once again. “I… would not have expected you to respond so.”

“We can fight, you know,” replied Maissel dryly. His ferocity had drained quickly away. “We protect our homes, too, when the Ahemmusa come. We just do not boast and make ridiculous challenges the way you Ashlanders do. Or accost without provocation people who might be ready to kill us.”

The tips of Maela’s long pointed ears turned a cutely acute red.

“Yes, well. These things do happen,” she said evasively.

Maissel chuckled. “Indeed. I take it the intent was to give me my comeuppance for attempting to get the better of you in our bargain? What need, when you emerged the victor of that deal regardless?” He watched her suspiciously.

Maela eyed the knives at his belt, and the wide hands by their hilts, in turn.

“Oh, no, that was not the intent at all, sera,” she said. “I’m afraid we find ourselves in an embarrassing situation. I mistook you for someone else.” She raised her eyes to blink innocently at him.

“Someone else, eh?” grunted Maissel. He shook his head disbelievingly, but did not call out her lie. “I will tell this someone to be careful, if I ever meet him. You pounce on a mer harder than the shelf hunting alit in Molag Amur. But I can waste no more time with this; I must return to your camp to collect the fruits of our bargain. We can go together.”

The girl gave a tiny squeak. “Oh – no, actually, I have business with one of the herders,” she said hurriedly.

Maissel shrugged. “An unlucky mer, it seems. Farewell, Maela of the Smooth Tongue and Fierce Boots.” He set off up the trail, the girl blinking bewilderedly at his back.

The Zainab were waiting when he at last gained the flat crown of the hill once more, assembled in a busy, grinning, smug crowd around a nervous-looking Hermy and Maissel’s cart – emptied of the crates and kegs with which he had come, but laden with the large pottery urns the Ashlanders used for storage, presumably holding his fat. Lightly laden; it was a pathetic sight, really. To the north, at the highest part of the hill where the khanumbra and its yurts squatted slightly separate from the rest of the camp, the Ashkhan was a distant figure in spiky chitin armor at the center of a line of his gulakhans, silhouetted once more against the cold skies, watching.

Maissel made his way through the crowd to where his cart waited, but as he did so, several things caught his attention. The people were gathering water. Of course, they were always drawing water from the natural well, in the depths of winter, but then it seemed to Maissel that every other mer and womer he saw in the throng was carrying an oiled waterskin. Too many wore their pale chitin armor, too, made from the conglomerated carapaces of metamorphosed scribs. The Ashlanders were warlike, but armor was still not worn for everyday chores. And – most tellingly – Maissel spied several yurts in the early stages of disassembly.

He turned slowly to face the north, to the Ashkhan across the camp, a satisfied smile on his wide lips that wiped the grins from the faces of the Zainab who saw it.

“It seems the Zainab will move on swiftly this year,” he called out loudly to the Ashkhan. The crowd quieted, activity ceasing to listen.

“The clouds move southward,” called back Shabael Al-Kaushad. “The Zainab will follow, and be there when the rains break.”

Maissel chuckled wryly. “A wise choice,” he yelled. “No doubt the Ahemmusa will not want wet guar!”

The Ashkhan said nothing, but watched on in silence. A hand nudged Maissel’s shoulder roughly.

“You are rude, fat-smith,” hissed Harah, frowning. “Leave. Now.” Her arm flung itself outward, pointing a path toward the village.

And the Zainab crowd parted in affronted silence as Maissel passed with his cart and his borrowed guar, and the chandler returned to his home with his pitiful profits, shamed and strangely disappointed in himself, while the Ashlanders collapsed their yurts and packed their belongings onto the backs of their strongest guar. For Maissel had spoken true; the Zainab fled the coming of the Salt-Mouth Velothi, for they had this year butchered too few guar to shame the fat-smith, and so had too much to lose to their vicious cousins. When they left, it was west they went, not south, and they went in the knowledge that they and their herds would grow lean and parched if the monsoons did not arrive before their waterskins and the small watering holes dried up from overuse.

There was no raid for the people of Vos to repel that year, because the Zainab left. The Ahemmusa came, of course, lighting their fires before the yurts they erected on the small islands near Vos in the bay, but – their scouts not finding the Zainab camped on the heights – the raiders turned south to hunt instead the Erabenimsun instead; there was no honor or challenge in raiding the weak settled farmers for their own sake, not for the Ahemmusa, the Salt-Mouth Velothi, the most feared of Ashland warriors in those days.

The Zainab did suffer, their lips cracking and ash-blue hides curing on their bones as they sacrificed their own water to keep their herds healthy, but luck was with them; spring arrived early that year, and the hills bloomed with greenery under the warm monsoons, and there was relief for the Zainab.

Part Two: Ayem
Chapter V

Summer had passed when the Zainab banished their Wise Woman's daughter. Summer; the days long and filling Vvardenfell's humid heat, the frequent rains warm at night under the sundered moons and cool in the sun glazed days, the winds whipping and frolicking lustily out of the mountains. Summer; the hillsides thick with rippling green wickwheat, the hackle-lo lush and pungent in the sheltered valleys, the locusts buzzing in the branches of the scattered elms, Vos' paddies along the shore overflowing with the crop sown the winter before, patches of tough kresh weed creeping in. Summer; alit bellowing their poetry from the highest heights and laying their leathery eggs in snugly secret nests, young kagouti males swarming in their scourge packs to quarter the empty rolling hills, leaving devastation in the wake of their newfound eye-tusks. Summer; the first true bloom of womerhood in Harah's daughter, in the heat of her blood, the fullness of her briasts, and the completeness of Ashkhan Shabael's response. Summer; long rich days for the chandler, stalking from Ashlands to islands hunting his vegetable stockpiles, long lonely nights for Chana, tossing in the cramped trundle of her childhood. Summer; the hills ripening golden in the heat, Shabael roasting over the bubbling fire in his loins, Maela floating on coy heights of newness and nihilism.

And then finally the Fall; the fleeting far between rains, the scuttling and squirming kwama their stockpiles shoring, the rapidly ripening saltrice and marshmerrow, the swiftly dwindling days, and the night when Shabael pressed the Ashkhan's advantage in an elm's leaf litter bed, and Harah's daughter in her Mask Perilous slapped three more teeth out of his head.

She stood trial the next morning under the khanumbra, ostensibly for charges of ancestral disrespect and blasphemy. In truth, the people tried her on the merit of the Ashkhan's Anger, on his lividity at the rank arrogance inherent in her refusal of the Ashkhan Advances and the casting of venomous Aspersions upon the Ashkhan. The Wise Woman defended her daughter, but the Ashkhan's fury was too great, and Maela's support too little among the rest of the Zainab; the girl had stated her bold opinions on everything too long and too carelessly for her to be much favored by her clansmer. the Zainab greatly respected Harah, but they wanted to see her daughter taken down a few notches.

They certainly got what they desired. Maela was set ouside the camp with the clothes she wore, the knives at her belt, and three skins of water, condemned to wander alone the Grazelands' wilds. Not outcast, though; only banished, until the end of the year. So she left, with her chin high and her heart sunken in the weight of her shame and fury, the tender jawed Ashkhan watching with her vehemently outraged mother and the rest of the tribe as the youngest Zainab strode alone into the cold, drying hills beneath the grey-blue skies.



The sun was setting bloodily on a night in Morning Star when Maissel finally returned to Vos, his leather pack full of ashes. In those days, before the Nerevarine slew Dagoth Ur, sunsets east of Red Mountain were always heart's blood scarlet with the spewing blight.

He was glad to see his home again. He had been gone over a week, travelling south along the shore to the treacherous wastes of Molag Amur, to gather scathecraw and fire fern to make into lamp and cooking oil, and to color his kwama wax and tallow candles. It was a treacherous journey, through Ahemmusa territory, and the hunting grounds of winter lean beasts, but Maissel relished it, ever year; the cold winds through his clothes, the shifting ashy scree slopes of Molag Amur, the live lava flows, the thrill of successfully evading an Ashlander hunting party. He went because he had to, to collect materials for his work, but he took a strangely fierce pride in returning to his quiet little village alive after his trials; a pride he confided to no one in Vos. There was something... illicit about the way he felt after being away from the village for a time; it made him vaguely uneasy and ashamed, and so he hid it from his people. But still, it was always good to come home.

The village was quiet when he came through the gates, the thick bundles of scathecraw leaf hearts tied to his back scraping the stone; people retired to their homes early, in the winter, when there was little work to be done and what there was, able to be done indoors. The eastern sky was a purple bruise to the west's open wound, but the streets of Vos were already dark, lit only by the glowing green glass of the houses' oval windows and the two blue lanterns hanging to either side of the chapel's courtyard gate.

But not completely vacant, it seemed, for as Maissel crossed the plaza and passed before the chapel, a voice called out.

"That you, sera Sarethi?"

The voice was smooth and young, and well known to the chandler.

"Yes, Yakin. It is me," he answered rockily as he turned toward the chapel. Gunaz' young apprentice, Yakin Bael, was seated on a hard stool just inside the courtyard's entrance, his peering, red haired head the only part of him illuminated by the lanterns above.

"Finally got back, have you?" he said grumpily, squinting into the gloom at the bundles of scathecraw on Maissel's back as he approached. "You didn't see anything out there, did you? Anything skulking around town?"

"Not a thing," grated Maissel. "Why?"

"People have been seeing things," answered Yakin with a heavy sigh. "Dark figures. Skulking shadows. Arasea Drenim swears she heard footsteps across her roof more than once. It's probably nothing, but my master says it could be a young vampire on the loose." He grimaced. "I don't believe it, but at any rate that's why I'm out here. Master laid protections around the whole chapel, but he couldn't handle the village entire, so I'm supposed to keep watch and repel the vampire, if there is one, if it tries to get in anyone's house. Apparently I need more experience handling malevolent undead."

"I see," said Maissel gravely when the young mer finally finished. "Well, in that case I had better get home before the sun sets fully. Safe vigil to you."

Yakin called out to him as he turned to leave. "You're sure you didn't see anything, then?"

"Quite sure," answered Maissel over his shoulder. "A good evening to you!" He hurried away, ignoring the fading grumbles of the apprentice. Not that he was worried; whatever Gunaz had told the boy, it was not very likely that there was a vampire hunting in the town. The Ordinators were quite vigilant about that sort of thing; a real whisper of a vampire was one of the few things that could get the Temple's attention to Vos. More likely that Bael had gotten himself into trouble again with his master, and Gunaz had decided a sleepless night in the cold could stifle the boy's temper nicely.

The slightly leaning wall of his square tower home loomed before him, and he swung the twin bundles from his back as he unlatched the door, bumping it open with his hip and backing into the room. The scathecraw rubbed its pungent roughness across his cheeks as he pulled the bundles sharply through the too-small doorway. Gunaz couldn't really think that one of the undead was on the loose; not even that tough old blighter would put an apprentice out in the night against an abomination like that, no matter what -

"Here at last. I was beginning to think you would never return, fat-smith."

The chandler shot into the air as ice ran up his spine. He let the bundles tumble out of his arms as he scrambled to turn around in his doorway and draw his knife at the same time. But he sheathed the blade again before even having drawn it fully, as he got a good look through the doorway into the dimly lit ground floor of his house.

"Not such a fierce response, this time," noted Maela calmly from where she sat at the head of Maissel's ancient table. A single yellow candle burned in a wooden stand held in her lap, illuminating from below her plumply pretty face.

"You caught me at a bad time, I'm afraid," said Maissel sourly, putting his hands on his hips and nodding to the scathecraw lying at his feet. "You seem to have a talent for that," he muttered as he bent down to heft the bundles up once more.

Maela gave a tight smile. Harsh red splits widened in her full lips, and she winced. "My pleasure, of course," she said, mock-sweetly.

Maissel straightened up, pulling the door closed behind himself. "I suppose you're the one that has been skulking about, then?" he said gruffly as he placed the bundles neatly against the wall, his pack next to them. "Scaring people and stealing what you could, I suppose."

"Skulking, yes; stealing, no. I was waiting for you, chandler."

Maissel arched an eyebrow as he looked down at her seated figure, lit orange-bright against the room's murky backdrop. "Looking for me, eh? Want to swindle me a few weeks early this time?"

Maela shook her head, her messy bun bobbing. "I would like to discuss business, but I have no intentions of 'swindling' you. If you would care to listen, I will explain why I have arrived ahead of my people." She watched his shadowed face calmly.

Long seconds of silence passed as the two studied each other; the rawboned grey-hair and the lush dimpled youth. Then the chandler gave a grunt of acceptance, and stepped past Maela's seat.

"Might as well have some light," he grated as he began stacking kindling from the bin on the hearth atop the ashes in the stonemold fireplace, "if we're going to do business. Light the lanterns, girl. You have no need to skulk any longer."

The girl smiled, and set the candle in her lap on the table, the glow gleaming on the swirling grain, and together the two set to filling the room with inveigling warmth and an amber distillation of light.

When the fire was built, the red orange flames roiling from the elm logs, panting dry-hot exhalations across the hearth, and the candles in the yellow paper lanterns lit and blinking softly by the room's rafters, Maissel took a seat at his stout table, facing Maela across one of its corners.

"So," said the chandler, "tell me, girl. What brings you here so early in the winter, and without the company of the rest of the Zainab?"

Malea folded her rounded little hands atop the buky skirts on her lap and watched Maissel with seemingly calm eyes. "Well, as you of course know, you did not part with the Zainab on the friendliest of terms last season," she began. "As the year passed, it began to occur to us that that sort of treatment is not the best way to make sure you wish to consider trading with us. So-"

The chandler broke in with a harsh laugh. "The Zainab said that?" he barked. "Deep in the mazte, perhaps. That is where that sort of soft hearted nonsense belongs."

The girl blinked, and frowned, in affront and shock, and Maissel laughed again.

"What, girl? Trading is a vicious business. You get away with as much as your opponent will let you, and sometimes it's your opponent who slips one past your guard. I doubt that you do, but you should not feel shamed by what you did for your people last year. I tried to use your inexperience to barter a deal sweeter for me, and the attempt turned. I was shamed by my slip, but there is no call for you, or the Zainab, to apologize. This is how the game runs."

The girl's chapped and split lips pursed as though peeved. "Well. Regardless, I bear the message I was sent with: the Ashkhan Shabael Al-Kaushad offers a humble apology for his tribe's actions and wishes to make amends when the Zainab arrive in a few weeks." She said the words with an odd ferocity.

The chandler's red eyes stretched slowly wider and wider, and his brow drew together with a tower of dark creases across his forehead. Maissel leaned forward on his elbows disbelievingly.

"Amends?" he grated quietly. "Amends. This is your Ashkhan's message?" The grey haired Dunmer sat back in his chair, brow furrowed and a tiny sneering curl to his dark lip.

Maela nodded, with a strangely satisfied little smile on her full mouth. "That is why I have come now. The Zainab value your trade, and indeed cannot afford to do without it in their current state of vulnerability. So it was thought that if the Zainab knew more of your work, we might be able to find new things to trade; materials we do not value that are necessities for you, that sort of thing."

The lava eyes narrowed. "So you're here to learn of the chandler's trade, are you?" he said, in as close to a dangerous murmur as his gravelly voice could come.

Maela's pouting mouth popped open in a small dark 'O' of surprise as her eyebrows leaped. "Nothing like that!" she said in a rush. "Just to learn how the Zainab could work with you better!"

"Hmmph," grunted Maissel. He had his doubts about the truth of that. This whole business smacked of Ashlander trickery. The Zainab must have a great deal of faith in the girl to think she could fool him two years in a row. But as he sat there studying the girl suspiciously, leaned back in his low chair, one arm on the table and fingertips tapping, his wide lips pressed tightly together, he took notice of several things that had slipped his attention before, and they did not quite fit with his first suspicions.

The girl looked - well, travelworn. And that was one aspect that Ashlanders did not don; travel was their life. The girl's face was still pretty, but less so now that he took a good look and noticed the telltale swirls of ash and dust on her dimpled cheeks, the smudges on her forehead and nose; she had clearly not had the benefit of a mirror, the last time she washed. There was a telltale droop of weariness to her large red eyes, and though she was still pleasingly plump, she was noticeably leaner than when last he had seen her. The black hair in its bun atop her head looked lank and unwashed, almost matted. Her full lips were cracked and dry, red splits harsh on her blue grey skin. Her clothes, too, showed the signs of hardship; the scarf that was draqed around the girl's neck and across her shoulders looked to be made of brown cloth at first sight, but that was only until he realized that there was grey in its folds, where the dust of the dry Grazelands had not clung.

It was not the figure he would have expected from an emissary of the Ashlanders. And, come to think, why was the girl here alone? Why would her tribe dispatch a girl like that through the treacherous wilds and to his village without even a single warrior as guard?
Maissel's eyes softened into sympathy as her appearance, in the warm golden glow of the lanterns above and the fire behind, worked its way into his briast. The girl looked away in shame, realizing the mer's understanding; she donned the Mask Perilous in swift self defense. Her glistening red eyes glared down at the long mushroom table.

"Well, I suppose if the Zainab think they must make amends then I will not pass up the opportunity for a good profit," said Maissel at last, adopting a grumbling tone to cover his shaming understanding. "Though I must say I think it unnecessary. The game is played by harsh rules."

Maela's eyes were still stony, her jaw still tight as she answered. "Very good. The opportunity to abase themselves for their errors give the Zainab great pleasure."

The chandler eyed her thoughtfully as he nodded. The room was silent for a minute as Maissel studied Maela and Maela endured his scrutiny by burning and hole through the table with her hot eyes. Then Maissel stood abruptly, offering one of his large, broad hands to the wearer of the Mask.

"Might as well get you settled in," he said gruffly to her condescending glance.

"Excuse me?" she replied slowly.

Maissel shrugged. "Well, if you're to be observing me at my trade, you might as well stay her until your people arrive. It might not be a good idea for you to go traipsing back and forth through the village every day from whatever camp you have in the hills. I have an extra bed roll and some blankets you can use."

The Mask popped right off, then, like a rock off a geyser of shock. The girl's mouth was an 'O' again, her eyes wide, but Maissel pretended not to notice. "You'll have to sleep in the cellar, but it's clean and dry and I've an oven or two to keep you warm."

"I - I - thank you," stuttered Maela as she put her dry little hand in his huge rough one for the second time. "Your hospitality is much appreciated by the Zainab."

Maissel drew her to her feet with a flashing grin at her quick recovery, but said nothing in direct response. The girl gathered her dust encrusted pack from under the table, and Maissel led her out of the room's golden glow. A single paper lantern in hand, the chandler showed her down the worn wooden stairs of his ancient home to the long cellar running beneath the streets of Vos, with its tan-gold walls lined with kegs and barrels, crates and vats, stones and pots and redware crocks, racks of glass and myriad tools shining dimly in the lamplight with all the other tools of Maissel's trade. He situated her snugly in a corner by the entrance, the leather bed roll laid out against the wall and piled high with woven kresh blankets, a gift from Chana that Maissel had never used. He bracketed her warmly on one side with one of his fat bellied, cast iron ovens, filled neatly with kindling and tough root logs to burn through the night by the girl's side. He showed her to the wooden tub of tepid wash water at the end of the cellar, by the wide wooden door opposite the stairway, and unwrapped the rice paper from a fresh cake of anther scented soap before he left her for the night, the lantern a warm comfort on the floor of the dark room as she washed. But more comforting than that, and perhaps more than the feeling of true cleanliness after a month of hard living, was the large wooden bowl of deliciously sour and substantive scrib jelly she found sitting quietly by her bed when she returned, warmed by the fire in the room above like the equally welcome bottle of mazte next to it.

Humble comforts, perhaps, but warming nonetheless to the banished Ashlands girl whose life for the last month and a half had been lonesome and cold, dashing from one swiftly vanishing water hole to the next to stay alive, skulking between the hills to avoid the maw-jawed alit and kagouti, the sly nix hounds, the opportunistic racers, and her own people. It was heady fare for one who had been subsisting on the winter dry hackle-lo leaves she could find in the valleys, the scattered husks of summer's locusts, and the odd scrib she could surprise and skewer on her spear. The land had shown her as little sympathy as the tribe that banished her. She had survived, but there was some question whether she would have done had she not fled to the east beforetime, to the hard well above Vos and then into the chandler's home. Against the harsh code of strength, pride, and self reliance her people followed it might have been, but Maela had been sorely tested already, both her body and her faith in her people; it was no surprise that she sought to shame them in the villagers' eyes by claiming to bring a message of meek servility and repentance... and perhaps earn a few meals in the doing. She had not anticipated that the fat-smith would respond to her troubles with sympathy, could not have known that he would follow his Temple's mandates of mercy, and could not help being warmed by his gruff hospitality.

But more comfortaing than anything else was the surprising discovery that she could trust the mer not to expose her shame. He had seen her troubles, and offered her aid under the guise of her pretense, and left her her battered dignity. As she drifted into sleep in the dark cellar that night, snuggled under three soft blankets against her clean skin, warm outside and in for the first time in weeks, with the soothing rush of flames in the oven at her side and the hot fullness of her belly, it was in a state of puzzled wonderment. She knew the settled folk were soft, although this one had proven he could be hard as well, but where had he learned to be so polite?

AN: Short one. Relatively.

Part Two: Ayem

Chapter VI

Maissel was already awake the next morning and boiling two large, iridescent white kwama eggs in the pot atop his Dwemer stove when Maela stepped silently off the stairs and into the square little room. She was much improved for a night's good rest and a real bath; the smudges and swirls were gone from her face and her hair clean if not smooth in its pin-held bun. She looked to have washed her clothes, as well, and dried them overnight by her little oven; the tan skirt and thin white blouse she wore had no travel stains to be seen.

She yawned cutely as she took a quiet seat at the table in the center of the room, trading tiny smiles with Maissel as he looked up from his pot stirring. She'd left off the scarf she usually wore for warmth; her blouse left her dimpled blue-grey shoulders bare.

Maissel clattered around the room quietly, fetching plates and cups from the hutch against the wall and fishing the palm-wide eggs from the steaming pot as the girl's large red eyes followed him, her head pillowed sleepily on her palm. He slid a redware plate in front of the girl, one of the boiled eggs rolling and steaming across it, then took a seat opposite her and handed his guest a small knife and fork.

"Thanks," sighed Maela as he took up his own knife. "You don't happen to have any yam butter, do you?" the chandler nodded taciturnly to a plain redware crock in the middle of the table, and Maela smiled her thanks. The girl ate with a quiet, somnambular contentment, dragging her knife through the thick leathery rind of the egg, then cutting the pale grey innards into thick slices and spreading them liberally with dark brown yam butter from its dish. She chewed slowly, staring down blankly at the dark grain of the table, not watching her host as he ate, but drinking silently of the water he poured into a small clay cup for her. Bit by bit consciousness seemed to tip toe back into her eyes, and they slipped off the table surreptitiously, to the tapestries on the walls, the hutch laden with dishes and cups and goblets, the small merry fire, and settled on the Dwemer stove by the hearth.

She eyed it thoughtfully for several minutes, her head hanging as she chewed her egg.

"Muri used to have one like that," she said slowly, not looking at Maissel. "In the tribe. But Kanly knocked it off a cliff with a bad shot, and the thing shattered completely with the fall."

"Someone in your tribe had a Dwemer stove like mine?" asked Maissel in surprise.

Maela nodded, but fixed her eyes on her plate instead of elaborating. The two ate in introverted silence for another few minute before the girl went on.

"Muri says it belonged to her aunt when she was a girl. Her uncle, Uroshnor, supposedly went into the ruin in the western mountains to retrieve it and win Muri's aunt's favor." She chewed another bite of buttered egg. "How did you get yours?" A quick flash of large red eyes to the chandler's narrow face, then back down to her meal.

Maissel grunted noncommittally as he watched the girl eat. "I'm afraid I don't know, exactly," he said, after a moment. "I've always had it, or my family has, anyway. Since my grandfather's time, and I know few family tales older than that. For all I know, grandfather could have gone himself to that same Dwemer ruin and retrieved it, like this Uroshnor you spoke of."

Another flash of the big red eyes, this time skeptical; it was apparently too much of an arrogance to intimate that his settled ancestors could have performed deeds as daring as those of the Zainab. She shrugged her bare shoulders.

"Maybe," she said as though bequeathing a boon. "Uroshnor did many of those sorts of things, if you listen to the stories of those like Muri, who were children when he was alive. Hunting outland demons. Kidnapping the daughters of the Telvanni wizards. Slaying monsters."

Maissel chuckled briefly. "He sounds like quite the mer."

"He was," answered Maela with a nod. "He brought the Zainab great honor. So did his son, Kaushad the Fruitful. They were both Ashkhans, you know. Uroshnor is the great-grandfather of our current Ashkhan, Shabael Al-Kaushad. Shabael took his grandfather's name as part of his own when he became Ashkhan, hoping that he would become so great," she added with sudden venom, "but his arrogance has not yet become so great as to take the name for his own entirely."

"You speak as though this is common, this taking of names," said Maissel, passing momentarily without comment over the girl's surprisingly vitriolic tone for her Ashkhan. "Is it custom to assume different names after birth, with your people?"

The round, smooth shoulders shrugged again. "Not common. Mostly with Ashkhans, really, or among those with many honored ancestors in their family. A mer might assume the name of one of his most honored, memorable ancestors, the ones whose names echo down through the centuries, to do honor to that ancestor, or to forge a special relationship with their spirit, or to declare his intentions for his life. Or he might have the name thrust upon him by the people if he walks a path so worthy of his ancestor's deeds that the resemblance is undeniable. It is more complex than this, of course," she said, glancing up briefly again, "but you do not need to know the ways of the true-hearted Velothi, Settled One."

The chandler shrugged and nodded his acquiescence. "As you say," he murmured, his voice boulders grinding like giants' teeth. He let the conversation sit a few minutes, as Maela scraqed the last of her egg off of its thick shell and took a long drink of water before saying, "But I am most curious... you sounded remarkably critical when you spoke of your Ashkhan."

"That is because the Ashkhan is a pathetic little mer who thinks his tongue can get him anything he wants," answered Maela in a surprising growl. "He attempts to walk the path of his grandfather, but he has little of his ancestors' boldness; he has a coward's heart and a filthy cat's liking for sugar. It is a wonder he did not lose more teeth than three," she added in a dark mutter.

"But enough," she said as she let her knife clatter to her plate, her breakfast finished, "you prying fat-smith. How do you intend to show me your craft?" She waited expectantly, eyes on the chandler.

"Piecemeal," grunted Maissel simply. "I cannot show all of my trade in a few weeks, so you will have to be satisfied by the scattered tasks I will be undertaking according to my usual schedule."

"Mm," mumbled the girl quietly, tracing the lines of the table with the tip of one finger. "Very well. What is first?"

"Ash is first, and ash is last," grated Maissel as he stood and began clearing the dishes from the table, stacking them on the hutch for reuse. Maela looked up at him, puzzled, but he did not explain. "Before that, though, I must have a wash," he said. "Wait here."

The chandler vanished from the room, down the stairs with fresh folded clothes under his arms, to the dark cellar's embrace, leaving Maela to her sleepy surveyance of his simple, bare home in the warmth and light of the small fire. When he returned, his grey hair dripping down the collar of his loose black shirt, the girl looked more alert, sitting up straight on the hard seat of her low backed chair. She jumped to her feet as he she spotted Maissel by the stairs.

"Ready, then?" she chirped.

Maissel nodded slowly. "I am. Follow me." He turned, pausing to snatch up his heavy pack from where it sat against the wall, and began climbing up the narrow creaking staircase. "But, girl, we need to speak of a few things before we begin."

"What things?" asked Maela, looking curiously at the mer's back as she followed him up the stairs.

"Your presence in the village," answered Maissel gravely. "You are my guest, of course, and I have the right to guest anyone I wish excluding criminals, but, girl, you should know that some here may not welcome your presence."

Maela scoffed loudly as they turned the next flight, Maissel's bare bedroom dark at their side. "You are telling me this, fat-smith? I would not expect your people to welcome the presence of a true Velothi in their midst; we are too much of a reminder of their own weakness."

"Hmmph," huffed the chandler, unlatching the long trapdoor at the top of the stairs and pushing it open, letting a slice of pale sunlight and crisp fresh air into the dark stairwell. "You are rude, girl. I am one of those you disparage." He gave the trapdoor a sharp push, and it flipped backwards onto the roof with a loud bang, exposing them completely to the sharp wind.

"I... did not include you, exactly," said Maela as she climbed onto the roof, sounding slightly chagrined. "You are not like most of your kind."

"That may be, or it may not," answered the chandler rockily. "Just watch yourself while in Vos. Keep a low profile. None of us are exactly harmless." The girl answered with a grudging nod of her round chin, and Maissel moved to close the trapdoor behind them.

It was a bright morning, after the dark of the house; the skies were clear and blue over Vos, the winds gusting and cuttingly cold at that height. The tower rooftop was small and flat, stonemold like everything else in Vos, with a low wall running around its edge. Small slanting runnels had been molded into the 'floor', and holes pierced the low wall periodically, to drain away the rains when they came. All of Vos was below them there, save the top of other tower across the reddish glass dome of the chapel; the little tan-gold houses with their simple hard blooded inhabitants, going about their daily chores ignorant of the Ashlander watching them from above. Beyond the village loomed the empty rocky heights where her people would camp, and the steep sided hills of the Grazelands, dry and brown with the stubble of harvested wickwheat. And in the other direction, the shore at the base of Vos' low cliff, where the long sand paddies, bolstered by stacked stones, were flooded with the high tide but otherwise empty, the saltrice seeds and marshmerrow rhizomes they held through the cold winter invisible beneath the sands. And the bay, the clear blue water splotched green with kelp, the thousand tiny islands and black spires of stone blending together in the distance, and the gigantic mushroom tower of Tel Mora just a few spans of water across from the village and as silently distant and secret as it had been the other side of the Sea of Ghosts. The Telvanni sorcerers were not sociable, even the relatively young and inexperienced ones; they never appreciated being reminded of Vos' existence. The villagers kept to themselves, and gladly; the Telvanni were dangerous and evil, profane necromancers and insane sorcerers.

It was a sign of the bravery and strength of the Ahemmusa that they made the islands of the bay their stalking grounds, camped with impunity in the shadows of Zafirbel Bay's three unnatural mushroom towers. Of course, there had never been any sign that the Telvanni had even noticed when the Ahemmusa shifted into the bay a generation ago, and they were not so daring as to camp on the same island as one of the towers, but there was still a powerful foreboding attached to them for it, to the image of Ashlanders come araiding, sea water dripping from their mouths and the strange mushroom towers at their backs. Their strength and ferocity was real, but it was this daring that made the Ahemmusa so feared by the Zainab and Erabenimsun.

Maissel's hand at her elbow drew Maela away from the wall, and out of her thoughts.

"So what's first, then?" she said eagerly, remembering their purpose. "What was all that talk about ash? What does ash have to do with making candles?"

"Nothing," answered the chandler. "But it has everything to do with making soap. Come over here, girl."

He beckoned her before a short line of large wooden barrels and buckets arrayed across the rooftop, then bent down and flipped open the top of his leather pack, lying on the roof against one of the barrels. It was filled with dark ash.

"I use the ash to make lye water," he explained as he pulled a large bucket under the spigot of one of the barrels. "This is rain water," he said, tapping the barrel next to it. "I fill a barrel with ashes, then add the rain water and let it sit. After a few days, you have lye water." He turned the spigot of the first barrel, and murky brown water gurgled out into the bucket.

"And what do you use this sneaky water for, fat-smith?" asked the girl.

"Soap, as I said," growled Maissel. "It is lye water that transforms the fat of the guar into the useful soap cakes. But you will see more of that in a few days. This water is not finished, though," he added as the last drops drained slowly into the large bucket. "It needs temperance with another sort of ash. Hand me that bucket, there."

Maela passed him a second bucket, and the chandler quickly dumped the dark ashes from his pack inside.

"What is the difference?" asked Maela.

The chandler took a thick wooden rod from its place leaning against one of the barrels and began stirring the ashes in the bucket slowly as he answered. "The ashes I used before were burned elm from my fireplace," he said. "These are the spewings of Red Mountain I collected from Molag Amur."

The small 'O' of surprise popped up once more on the girl's face, framed by her red-split lips. "You have been to the wastelands?" she gasped incredulously.

Maissel chuckled. "I daresay I've been to the wastelands in the south more often than anyone else you know. I go every year, for the ashes."

Maela frowned. "But - but the monsters, the kagouti and alit and nix would get you! I have heard they are even more dangerous in the Amur than they are here. You would be eaten up, if you really went there! And besides, my people would see you going south through our lands, and they have not." She spoke as though that settled the matter; he had clearly been lying.

The chandler's rough laugh echoed over the village.

"The Zainab do not see all, girl. I have evaded your scouts in the hills and those of the Erabenimsun in the wastes for more years than you can imagine. More difficult to avoid are the beasts, but I manage that as well. For the most part."

"I don't believe," the girl stated stoutly. "You could not avoid us for so many years."

"Believe it. My family has been slipping through your hills without your knowledge for at least five hundred years. There have been accidents and near misses, but the mere fact that you do not know of our daring proves our skill. I myself have never been close to capture. If you do not believe me, girl, check this ash," he nodded down to the bucket. "You cannot find ash of this kind without crossing the hills, west or south."

The girl looked away mulishly, lips pursed in an expression reminiscent of the Mask, and Maissel left her to her stubbornness. Kneeling by the bucket, he untied a small leather pouch from his belt. Pulling open the drawstring, he bent his head briefly over the contents, murmuring a short prayer. Then he poured the grey contents slowly into the bucket.

"Well, now what was that?" asked the girl, still sounding offended, as Maissel replaced the empty pouch at his belt.

"Ancestor ash," he stated simply, and began to stir the contents of the bucket once more.

Maela let out a horrified squawk. "Ancestor ash?!" she squeaked. "You're mixing the dust of your ancestors with - with common cinders?" Her pretty face was a picture of horrified revulsion. "I knew you settled folk were blasphemous, but I never would have thought anyone could do something so vile!" Her nose was wrinkled, her mouth turned down harshly.

"This is not blasphemy," replied Maissel, surprisingly unperturbed. "This is reverence. We do not worship in quite the same way as your people, but we still give honor to the ancestors. The lye water I will make with these ashes will be sanctified lye, used only for the preparation of soaps for holy rituals. This soap is one of the ways we remain close with our ancestors; it is central to many of our ceremonies, for weddings and births, for the purity of our priests before holy works, for the washing of the dead before cremation. As the fat of the guar cleanses our bodies, so do we beseech the beneficence of our ancestors to cleanse our spirits." He tapped the stick on the side of the bucket to free it of ashes, then set it aside and hefted the bucket high, pouring the dark grey contents into an empty third barrel.

"That... is very different from what I was taught of your people," said Maela quietly. "Perhaps it is not such blasphemy."

The chandler stooped to snatch the first bucket, filled with brownish lye water, from the roof, and poured it carefully into the barrel with the ancestor ash.

"You are young, Maela," he said, letting the empty bucket drop to the ground, "and your people know little of our ways at best. We are less different than you think. But come; the water must steep for at least a day before it can be used, and the prickled skin of your shoulders tells me the wind's chill has cut you." He laid one broad, callused grey hand on the cold-pimpled skin of her neck, and ushered her gently back to the warm darkness below.

AN: Now this...this is long.

Part Two: Ayem
Chapter VII

Chana was becoming frustrated. It had not been a fruitful year for the Hetman's daughter, and all the more infuriating for the surfeit of fruit it should have borne; she had sown a prodigious number of seeds in the chandler's heart and home. The summer had been the worst for the poor girl; it was not easy, getting things to grow in soil that was continually vanishing into the mysterious hills on inscrutable errands of industry. Chana had little success. In fact, it could be said that not a single stunted sprout had pried its sorry head from the rocky, gritty soil that was Maissel's monotonous life. It was as though her seeds were of some alien substance to the mer's inner self; not antithetical, but skewed just enough to make interaction impossible. They did not bounce off him; he slid around them.

Yet still she tried, whenever she could catch the chandler at home for an hour or a day or a rare week. Still she set her traps in his home; the newly knitted kettle mittens on the hearth, waiting to spring; the refilled cask of sea boiled salt, ready to ensnare the mer with convenience; the polished boots screaming marital eligibility with their shine; the long square cushions arranged before the hearth, positively begging to bear the ravishing of the Hetman's daughter. She filled the mer's bare house with all the most enticing visions that had danced through her imagination in all the long, inventive hours she had spent sheening the magnificent, ancient table she would one day call her own. But one place she left as cold and bare and hard as it had ever been: the bed. Let her chandler see how unwelcoming his nights were, and think on how she could warm and comfort those, as well.

When he was in, she perfumed his home with the scent of seduction; the floating curls of her scandalously loose copper hair, the slowly shortening and tightening kresh linen skirts and gradually unbuttoning blouses, the accidental touches and boldly coy looks, the smoky bug musk burning in its long stand on the oiled table, the whispered voice that made her chandler lean closer to hear.

Yes, as the summer wore on the Hetman's daughter began to lose all sense of what was reasonable reserve in a courtship. A year before she would never have considered leaving her top button open to entice a mer, or taking an extra kwama egg each morning to put a curve to her hips and fill out her briasts, but Maissel's continued unresponsiveness was enough to drive anyone to shameless coquettry. And all for naught; all her oiling and hemming, her basting and curling, her eating and waiting, her insuating and sidling, all useless in the face of Maissel's simple inability to respond interactively. By the time fall had arrived in cool and gloom, Chana was almost ready to admit defeat and invoke her failsafe; she was almost ready to confide in her mother.

It was a point of pride among the young mer and womer of Morrowind's tiny agrarian villages, not having to resort to one's parents to arrange a match. Everyone knew, for the most part, whom everyone else would partner with in the end; these things were largely inevitable in those societies, barring major, unforeseen events such as kidnappings - whether those be by Ashlanders, the Temple, or an unsatisfied mind. It was the journey to the union that was important, for it set the stage for the rest of their long meric lives; who would make whom swoon, or give up a kiss or something more; who would make whom see the rightness of an opinion; who could see more mer or womer or both on the side without getting caught. No one wanted to involve the parents; it was humiliating to their love-making abilities, and set a bad precedent of weakness before the intended spouse. But involved the parents did sometimes become, when the intended was particularly stubborn or obtuse, and when they did, the issue was usually settled with great efficiency. The Dunmer parents in those tiny villages knew their peers, from long decades or centuries of coexistence, and they knew how to motivate their local priest, as well, to facilitation of a match. Few recalcitrant brides or grooms failed to cave under the combined pressure of love, duty, and faith.

It was not a course Chana wished to take. There were no other young womer in the village at that time, to sneer at her ineptitude, but her sister, Alimah, her elder by twenty-seven years, had played the recalcitrant lover when her husband came acourting. She would never let Chana live it down if she could not snare her mer on her own. And furthermore, her mother had never shown very much interest in her marriage; she was a quiet womer, and focused on her work. Not really domestic at all. Chana was on her own with her hunt of the chandler, and that was the way she wished to keep it.

So Chana delayed, as the rains chilled to freezing sleet, as the ground hardened to stony frost, as the sand paddies emptied and were resown, and through the chandler's long infuriating and hurtful absences, through those cold, lonely nights, until the skies cleared and the grounds dried and Maissel Sarethi returned from his last journy. And still not ready to admit defeat and repair to her mother's comforting arms; she had the encouraging knowledge that the chandler's forays out of Vos were done until the next year's spring monsoons had passed. It was her chance, her prime opportunity, the long uninterrupted assault for which she had been waiting to make her final moves, the ones that would finally breach the mer's inner defenses. She would visit every day; she would boil bug musk into the mer's kwama eggs; she would trip him into bed; she would force all those torturously sown seeds to come to life, and she would begin her own life in his home.

Such was her mindset when she knocked on the ancient, engraved boards of the chandler's home, the second day after his return (she had waited, so as not to seem eager). She came with a determined glint in her soft black eyes, a stylish blue dress wrap around her long thin body, and a cuttle pie in her bony hands. She was armed for the battle of romance.

There was no answer after her first knock, nor after the fourth, nor the seventh, so she pulled up on the iron latch and entered her intended's home without invitation. A small fire burned in the fireplace, and the paper lanterns hanging from the lanterns were glowing softly golden, but her chandler was nowhere to be seen.

"Sera Sarethi?" she called as she set the fat little pie with its flaky brown crust and redware dish atop her pride of place, the shining mushroom table. "Maissel?" she called nervously.

"Downstairs, Chana," rumbled the chandler's voice, a distant thunder.

A dim golden light glimmered at the end of the long dark cellar, a rectangular lantern, twisting and turning slowly where it hung from the low ceiling. The chandler's voice tumbled through the room toward her, words indistinguishable at first, less and less so as she came closer, but the mer himself was invisible, hidden behind one of the large wooden vats he used for his work. Who was he talking to, she wondered?

"...so we've melted and separated the grease and lard and leftover bits of muscle from each other. With a little bit of heating to melt the grease again, we'll be ready to add the lye," the low voice was saying. "So open that jar; we will need the fragrance soon enough."

Chana rounded the edge of the last vat, and there was her Maissel, her grey haired, weatherbeatn, rawboned old Maissel with his wiry muscles and impossibly broad grey callused hands, perched on a rickety stool in a yellow pool of pulsing lamplight. One hand was on the handle of a large cast iron skillet set atop the flames of his strange Dwemer stove, the other on a thick wooden spoon, stirring the contents of the skillet, and his burning red eyes were on her like a welcome blaring brand on her heart. Her lungs almost seized up.

"Hello there, muthsera," he said, wide lips smiling up at her.

"Hello, Maissel," she sighed, almost melting out of her dress then and there.

"What brings you today?" he asked cheerfully.

Chana bit her underlip, hiding a smile buoyed on his tone as she answered. "Oh, just the usual thing. Thought you might need help tidying up. Oh, and I made a cutle pie for you. It's upstairs."

"Kwama cuttle pie," said the chandler approvingly. Chana almost shivered. "My thanks, Chana. Cuttle pie is one of my favorites."

"Oh, it was nothing, sera," said the young womer, positively glowing, a happy smolder beginning to dawn in her eyes. "I-"

"Finally!" exclaimed a voice suddenly, cutting her off. "Do you have any idea how hard that wax seal was, fat-smith? I nearly thought you'd used stonemold instead." Chana blinked, in silent shock.

Maela emerged from the darkness behind Maissel, a large redware pot in her hands, its lid hanging askilter by the clinging, twisted seal, a knife embedded in the red wax. Maela, with her bare round shoulders, her thin white blouse and full briasts, her becoming skirts and bare feet, her pretty dimpled face and captivating red eyes. A shivering bristle started at the base of Chana's spine, and marched up her back, prickling her skin and stiffening her muscles tightly.

"Think a little, girl," said the chandler gruffly, taking the pot from her hands and sniffing it carefully before tipping it briefly over the skillet. A splash of greenish liquid spilled out, sizzling loudly as it hit the yellow, smoking grease in the black metal. "Heat the knife in the flames first, next time, and you will have no trouble."

"'Think a little', he says," muttered Maela. "Think a little! I am no fat-smith, fat-smith!" she said, shaking a finger at him mock-severely, her split lips pouting. "I do not know these things!"

"Maissel?" squeaked Chana tightly. "Who is this?"

"Anyone should know that wax softens with heat!" grated the chandler. "A better excuse, next time."

"Maissel?" repeated Chana.

The chandler turned his attention back to the stiff backed womer in front of him.

"My apologies, muthsera," he said politely. "Chana Aralas, may I introduce you to Maela, daughter of Harah, Wise Woman of the Zainab Ashlanders. Maela, this is Chana Aralas, daughter of the village Hetman."

Maela's eyebrows rose in surprise, as though she had not realized there was anyone else there with them, and a guarded shutter came down behind her eyes as she surveyed the village womer.

"Greetings," she said shortly, her gaze traveling swiftly and piercingly over the folds of Chana's midnight blue wrap, clearly noting the clasping triangular brooch holding it together at her briast, convenient to a mer's hands, and the way the folds slid down to expose one of her thin grey-blue shoulders.

Chana nodded stiffly, but said nothing to the Ashlander. Her eyes could not touch her without her fingers spasming at her sides. She spoke to Maissel.

"A guest, sera? I had not heard that you kept guests... even from other villages."

"I do not, usually," replied the chandler, his gaze focused on his stirring of the grease in its skillet. "But Maela is here on important trade negotiations for the Zainab, so I have made an exception." He lifted the pan slightly by its handle, giving a slow swirl over the flames.

"I see," replied Chana coldly. She turned to go. "I must get to my work then, sera," she said. "I will leave you to your negotiations.”

“Oh, don’t go,” called the chandler, his beseeching tone simultaneously igniting her heart with fury and splitting it with longing. “I have not been home nearly long enough to make cleaning worth your while. There really is no need, Chana. But stay; I am just showing Maela part of the process of making soap, so her people will have more knowledge of my work with which to facilitate trade. You might find it interesting as well.” Maela shot him a cool sideways glance, but made him no comment.

“I- I-” Chana could not decide. Here was Maissel, acting more warmly toward her than he had ever done. Here was her mer, with a flagrant, fat little Ashlands chit tucked away in his cellar in secret. Here was the chandler, inviting Chana to share in his work, in the fat of his life. Hope won out over outrage, and Chana caved.

“I - I suppose I can stay awhile,” she sighed.

“Good,” said the chandler with a broad, oblivious grin. “Have a seat. There should be another stool here somewhere,” he muttered. “Ah! Yes,” he exclaimed, pulling a low three legged stool from the shadows between two stacks of crates behind him. “Here you are.”

“Thank you,” said Chana woodenly, taking the stool from his hands and settling down upon it close by his side. At his other side, Maela resumed her own stool.

“Now. Back to business,” began the chandler happily, leaning forward between them to stir the now transparent fat in the skillet. “So, Chana, this is part of the process of soap making. So far, we have...” he trailed off, eyeing Maela thoughtfully. “Well, come to think, why don’t you explain what we’ve done so far.” He waited expectantly.

“I am not your apprentice, fat-smith,” Maela grumbled. “I am not here to memorize your trade.”

“Think of it as practice, so that you will remember what must be remembered for your tribe,” rumbled the stirring chandler, his brow wide lips pursing peevishly. Chana’s countenance brightened at his side, a beam of sunlight on a day thought hopelessly overcast.

Maela grimaced at him, but when she spoke, it was with surprisingly little reluctance. “Very well, then. I will tell this Chana-girl what we have been doing. Fat-smith here takes fat, chopped up bits of guar suet, that he preserved from last season’s butcherings, and he puts them in this skillet. Then he lights the interesting stove beneath it, melts the fat - it crackles, pops, makes a greasy mess all over your clothes - until all that will be liquid has done so. Then he strains out the two, guar-special fats from the mixture - lard and grease - using some white cheesecloth. Then he places the grease back in the cleaned skillet, and begins melting it again. He adds some very pungent and difficult to open aromatic essence to the mixture. Then he stirs, and instructs me to tell what he has done so far, and sits listening to me like a kagouti asking its young to take refuge in its mouth. After, he will -”

“Enough,” grumbled Maissel. He shot her a stern look, but there was a curve to his dark lips. Maela smiled back primly.

“As impertinent as she is, the girl is accurate,” the chandler went on, turning to Chana. “And now, we are ready for the next step: the addition of the lye water.” He got to his feet, shooing the girls off their own and away to the edge of the pool of lamplight. The skillet smoked at his back. “Careful, now. Stay back. This isn’t going to be pretty.” He bent, and hoisted a heavy bucket out of the shadows, sloshing and fully of grey lye water. He approached the skillet carefully, the bucket balanced in his large hands. Then he let it tip briefly, high above the skillet, and jumped backwards as soon as some of the water had spilled out.

From the volume of the noise of all the crackling and popping and sizzling that skillet let out when the lye water hit the fat, one would have thought it had exploded. Grease spattered out liberally, speckling the stonemold floor around the skillet in glistening dots and leaving hot grey spots on Maissel’s shirt and trousers. The eruption died down to a low patter after a few moments, and the chandler approached anew to pour the rest of the lye into the skillet.

He set the bucket aside, and beckoned to the two girls. “That’s done now. You may sit again.”

Chana’s shoulder bumped the Ashlander girl’s as they made their ways back to their respective seats. The lean womer turned her furious gaze down on the plump girl. There was no mistaking the message in those eyes; the chandler was hers, and would be a battleground if the girl disputed her claim. Chana would not let some upstart barbarian girl-child steal what she had worked so long to trap. The message sizzled through Maela like the fat on the fire, and goaded both her backbone and her instincts of self-preservation. The village womer would attempt to seduce this fat-smith and then send her back out to her cold banishment once more? Not if she had any wiles to wield; she would not let herself be separated from her sole source of succor, and certainly not by any womer with hips as narrow and bony as those. Their eyes locked, and grated, and sparked, and an instant emnity was inflamed; of pride, of necessity, and of complete secrecy.

“Well?” grumbled Maissel, watching them impatiently. “Will you sit or will you not? Stand if you wish, but it is some time to wait for this process to complete.”

And it was, some time indeed of sitting at the chandler’s side as he stirred and stirred and stirred the watery, oily mixture and more and more steam boiled away from its top. Some time indeed for the two womer to issue the opening blows in their silent war, for the two to pose small questions to their grey haired battleground, to touch his shoulder and brush his hand, to sidle ever closer to his sides, the both of them boldly territorial - not that he noticed. Some time indeed until the mixture in the skillet had grown thick and white and finished so that the heat below could be removed, and the two womer had reached their final positions; tucked snugly under the chandler’s arms, alternatively glaring across his chest at each other and smiling up at him, their bodies respectively soft and bony pressed against his sides.

He frowned down at the two dissimilar faces, perplexed at their behavior, but said nothing. He just shook his head, and tapped the spoon on the side of the cast iron skillet, and got to his feet. The two girls followed without hesitation; he had to lift his arms and sidle away, his brow creasing more sternly, before they let go of him. He folded his arms over his chest, studying them in a miserly way. The two faced him without scruple, smiling innocently.

He spoke after a few moments, slowly and suspiciously. “Well,” he said, eyes passing from one to the other, “that’s that done. This soap just needs to cool before it is reheated and poured into the molds. I assume the two of you would not be opposed to a small break for lunch? We can share out that pie you brought, Chana.”

Surprisingly similar looks of reluctance crossed the faces of both womer.

“Oh, I’m really not that hungry,” said Chana first, apologetic.

Maela spoke swiftly in her wake. “Is it really necessary, fat-smith? I am more interested in the knowledge I can gain down here to benefit the trade of my people than I am in food.”

The chandler grunted sourly. “Suit yourselves,” he said, frowning. “But I am hungered, and I intend to have some of that pie. You are of course free to leave if you do not wish to dine with me, muthsera,” he said to Chana, “as you are free to remain down here if you wish,” he added to Maela, “but I - I am going to eat some lunch.”

“Perhaps I could do with a bite or two, if you would like some company,” revised the village womer quickly, sounding hopeful. She cast a dark glance sideways at the plump Ashlander.

Maela returned it, a sour purse to her split lips. “If you will not continue, fat mer, there is no point in remaining. I wil take some of this pie.”

Maissel threw up his hands. “Whatever you choose to do,” he growled, “just do it!” He turned away without another word, striding quickly away down the dark length of the cellar and away up the stairs. Behind him, the womer traded silently venemous stares, then followed, jostling briefly for precedence.

“Oh, let me!” exclaimed Chana when they emerged into the warmth of the small ground floor and found Maissel fetching plates and utensils from his hutch. “Do sit down, sera, I can -”

“Hush, girl,” he grated, laying one broad hand on her bare shoulder and pushing her gently to one of the table’s chairs. She slid like putty under his fingers. “You provided the meal. Leave something for me to do.” He slid three redware plates onto the table.

Maela slumped into a seat across from Chana, shooting her a hard glance, then turning to eye curiously the crusty pie in the center of the table.

“What is this, Settled One?” she asked, leaning low over the table to peer at the dish and giving Chana a humiliating view down her blouse, her full briasts pressed against the edge of the gleaming wood. “I have never heard of this thing, this ‘pie’.”

“Oh, no?” said Chana sympathetically. “Well, I suppose not, living out of touch with all civilization as you do. A pie is just a crust made from lard,” she shot a glowing look to Maissel, “and wickwheat flour, and filled with something. In this case, kwama cuttle stewed with saltrice mush and a few secret seasonings.”

“And quite delicious, I’m sure,” put in Maissel as he pulled his chair up to the head of the table. “Your mother’s always is, anyway.” The daughter preened, smiling and biting her lip cutely.

“We make something of the sort,” said Maela, her head leaned over on her round arm to look up at Maissel from the tabletop. “Smaller, though, with a saltrice paste around the outside baked into a crust. We wrap them in yam skins and let them roast in the coals. And they usually have meat, too.”

Chana smiled, primly superior. “Delicious, I’m sure. But perhaps we would like to begin...?” Her hand reached for the steel knife Maissel had set next to the pie’s dish.

Maela’s got there first though, snatching the handle up as she straightened her spine of sudden. She waggled the blade playfully across the table.

“You must let me cut,” she said. “You, you have made the pie, and he, he has gotten the plates and the eating tools, so I must cut or things will not be even.” She smiled, her plump cheeks dimpling and the splits in her lips pulling as she slid the blade through the crust and the orange meat below it. Chana watched sourly as she cut three large pieces from the dish. Her mouth opened to protest when she saw just how large, but Maissel was grumbling his approval and Maela watching her daringly, so she shut it quickly.

“There you are,” said the Ashlands girl cheerfully as she lifted the piece onto the villager’s plate; Maissel was already tucking in with gusto to his own. “Put some curves on those hips,” she added in a whisper just loud enough to pop Chana’s mouth open once more, this time in shock. The girl took up her own fork last, her chapped lips smiling in satisfaction.”

“Quite excellent,” said Maissel approvingly between bites of the salty, spongy orange dish. “How does it sit with your Ashlands preferences, Maela?”

The girl’s large eyes shot wide open as she slid the first bite dubiously between her teeth. Then they slid slowly shut as she chewed in almost indecent appreciation.

“Incredibly well,” she said, opening her eyes. She smiled in genuine warmth across the table. “You settled folk definitely could teach the Zainab a few things about cooking!”

Chana’s answering smile was cool, if satisfied; the compliment was noted, but battle was not to be ceased. The three stayed silent for several minutes, Maela and Maissel enjoying their pies with vigor, Chana quietly observing her lulled adversary and nibbling at her own food. When Maela had swallowed the last bit of her slice with an appreciative groan, she spoke.

“You must be very popular with your tribe, Maela,” she said innocently.

Maela’s eyes deadened and hardened dangerously, her back stiffening in affront as she raised her hot gaze to Chana’s cool black one.

“What do you mean by this, Settled One?”

Chana shrugged blithely, standing and collecting their empty dishes. “I just thought,” she said as she turned to slip the plates into the bucket of wash water on the floor, “that you must have kissed a great many of your tribe’s mer, to get lips as chapped as yours.”

“Chana!” growled Maissel suddenly. The girl jumped slightly, her back to the chandler, her small, satisfied smile hidden. Maela was staring in outrage, but there was hurt in her eyes. The fingers of one hand rose involuntarily to trace her injured lips.

“Yes, Maissel?” replied Chana, a picture of innocence.

“Your words offend my guest’s honor, Chana,” he growled, red eyes staring intently at her back. “Winter is a difficult time for the Zainab. Maela has had little water of late, and the winds have been great. I think you should apologize, Chana.”

“Oh, but I meant no disrespect!” she exclaimed, spinning around in wide eyed dismay. “I meant it as a compliment! And besides,” she added in a low murmur, “I was not aware that your guest had honor.”

Maela scowled, pressing her lips together tightly to hide their splits. “Yours are barbed compliments, s’wit,” she muttered, equally quietly. She met Maissel’s worried frown briefly before lowering her gaze broodingly to the table.

The chandler studied her concernedly for a moment before gesturing to Chana. “Perhaps it would be best if you left for now, girl,” he said quietly. “No doubt you spoke in ignorance, but the offense remains. Thank you for the pie; it was most delicious.” He stood to usher her to the door.

Chana’s brow creased in dismay, sincere this time. “Oh, but, I really intended no harm,” she babbled as Maissel’s hand on her shoulder slid her inexorably toward the exit. M aela watched with a tightly sour smile. “Let me stay and make amends, sera,” she pleaded, staring up at Maissel beseechingly.

The chandler shook his head. “I think it’s for the best if you leave now,” he rumbled quietly down to her. “Ashlanders are extremely touchy about their honor. I don’t want a challenge issued to you,” Chana’s heart melted; he was worried for her, “and ruining my relations with them.” Her jaw dropped open with the impact of the cold lump of ice in her stomach.

“But - but -” Chana turned, setting her arms against the mer’s chest in resistance. To little effect; the chandler continued unceasingly to the door, Chana’s slippers sliding across the floor until her heels banged against the door.

“You turn me out of your house and let that savage remain?” she spat, facade abandoned. Her eyes were like augers. “She could be a thief! She could be a spy! What if she brings them all down on our heads?! It’s not right to shelter her, Maissel!”

“It is right to show mercy to those who need it,” he growled back at her quietly, his brow tightening dangerously. “That girl is no spy; she is a womer in need. And I have every right to choose who I host in my home!”

Chana quailed under her intended’s fearsome glare.

“Oh - oh of course, Maissel,” she said, bowing her head to rest her forehead against his chest, “but please, don’t send me away! Let me stay with you!”

“Chana,” he rumbled into her scarlet hair, “it’s time for you to go.”

The girl let out a frustrated huff. “Fine,” she snapped peevishly, looking up fiercely into his eyes. “But, Maissel, when will I see you again?” Her thin fingers rubbed his chest in stubborn enticement.

“I don’t know, Chana,” he said. “I don’t know when Maela will return to her people. I will send for you. Be patient.” He unlatched the door at her back, and it banged open against the outside wall, caught by the wild midmorning wind.

“Very well, sera,” she replied as coldly as the wind, stepping backwards into the washed out sunlight of the village streets, her black eyes sad and drooping, avoiding Maissel’s. “I will go away now, sera, and wait for you to call me to you when you are done with the Ashlands girl. Good day, sera.” She turned without another word and marched away in her pretty, depressingly still-wrapped dress, her bony knees wobbling with emotion.

Maissel watched her go for a few moments from his doorway, the wind whipping at his clothes and the young womer’s words and looks and tones doing their best to whip at his heart. Then he stepped back, and shut out the chilling wind from the warm little room.

Maela’s large red eyes were on him when he turned around, the wisps from her messy bun curling wildy around her heart-shaped face.

“Well, her ‘pie’ was certainly tasty,” she said calmly. “Another piece? I’ll split one with you, fat-smith.”

AN: Even longer! I can feel the forum groaning.

Part Two: Ayem

Chapter VIII

The chandler's cellar was busy that next week, and the place was not unperturbed by the phenomenon. It was well used to Maissel's quiet company, of course, but it had been some time since the belly of the chandler's home had held a womer in its depths with any regularity. Too, the place was accustomed to a certain amount of solitude; it had not had a night time companion for nearly two centuries, since Maissel moved from his childhood cot to the master's bed above. There was a certain degree of adjustment that had to occur in those silent walls; one could not simply swallow in stride the sound of breathing at midnight, accept without acclimation the sudden sleepy eyed sharing of morning elbow space, or imbibe without apoplexy the unwarned appearance of a naked bathing youth in one's sanctum.

It put the cellar slightly off its temper, at first. Who was this girl, with her dimples and round arms, to invade its warm coexistence with its chandler? What audacity, to think she would sidle into their sanctuary and be accepted! Had there ever been such a naively impertinent chit as this? The cellar was a jealous place, unwilling to accept new initiates with good grace, and suspicious, according to its nature; it was the guardian, after all. The chandler's cellar was a gatehouse, in truth, the protector of the deeper secrets which lay behind the wide doors at its far end, and it took a sentinel's surly attitude.

Yet it caved quickly to the girl, at least for a building nearly one thousand years old. It was the business that did it, of course; just as much as it was a checkpoint, a gatehouse, the cellar was a place of industry consecrated by generations of chandlers. It did not take much watching of the girl, at Maissel's side day after day as the mer plied his trade in lamp lit gloom, for the cellar to decide that the girl and her rich curves were quite welcome in its factory of fat. It took Maela longer to accept the presence of its walls in her plains dweller’s heart; nearly a week with her rawboned eaving, watching him melt the preserved guar fats in his dark skillet, helping him strain the liquid oils, stirring the holy lye water and aromatic essences into the result, holding the wooden molds as he poured the various soaps and impressed the triangular seal of the Tribunal into their soft faces, before the fascination of the work and the beguiling comfort of the chandler's sanctuary combined to truly reveal to her the appeal of solid walls. Her understanding - epiphanic for an Ashlander - was the turning of the key in the cellar's gatehouse heart.

"That should be the last of those," grated Maissel quietly, prying the last pink-white cake from its mold and placing it beside its fellows in the slatted crate. "A month to cure, and these will be ready for delivery to the chapel," he went on, tugging the guar hide gloves from his broad hands.

"Excuse me?" said Maela disbelievingly from behind him in the pool of light spilling from the blue lantern in her hand. "Did I hear that correctly, chandler? We are finished making soaps? No more talk of soft heather scented cakes for the first baths of your babes, or bloat and stoneflower mixes to purify the body before marriage? No more lectures on your naughty liquid soaps, black rose for a womer's cleanliness before consummation, gold kanet for the groom? No more talk of ash and lichen cakes to scourge the bodies of the dead before cremation? You see, fat-smith, I do listen. But are you sure you have not forgotten one or two? Something rough and salty, perhaps, for the scrubbing of priestly nether parts during the coincidence of full moons?" She stared at him intently, lips twitching with a suppressed smile.

Maissel chuckled. "You heard correctly, girl."

"Then what is next?" she asked expectantly. "As interesting as the intricacies of your ritual soaps may be, I did not come here to see this one thing only."

"I told you at the start, you would have to do with what I do while you are with me. I cannot afford to disrupt the flow of things just so that you may learn my trade."

"Am I your apprentice, fat-smith?" she said, shaking the lantern at him playfully. "Am I here to learn your trade. No. I am here to benefit the Zainab. And the Zainab are not benefited by endless repetitions!" Her tone was belligerent, but there was a mirthful twinkle in her eyes.

"Oh, all right, all right!" chuckled Maissel. "Quiet your belly-aching, girl! I will show you something new." He crossed his arms over his chest, smiling down at her.

"Good. What?" said the girl.

"Candle making," he stated. "Or a part of it, anyway. One of the less important parts. But first, I must retrieve some materials. Have you ever wondered what is behind those doors?" he asked as he stepped past her, gesturing to the broad doors across the cellar, opposite the stairwell.

"I had not thought that they had a behind, to be truthful, Maissel," she answered, playfulness fading. "Or if I did, that it was just some closet."

Maissel's broad lips grinned down at her, his dark face pale and washed out in the blue light of the lantern in her hand. "Oh, they have a behind, Maela. A very important behind. Come."

He stepped closer to the broad doors, fishing in one of his baggy pockets. Maela lifted the lantern curiously; on closer inspection, the doors were much more impressive, banded and cross banded with iron. It would take a battering ram to break through them. A large iron key emerged from the chandler's pocket, and his callused fingers inserted it into the lock. There was a click, and a grind, as it turned.

Maissel pushed the door open just a short ways as he removed the key. A cool draft breathed from the dark gap.

"Bring the lantern," he said as he slipped into the darkness. Maela followed, glowing blue lantern in hand. Beyond, the walls and floor were rough, dark grainy granite glinting in the pale light. They were in a wide, carved tunnel, the ceiling low above their heads. It curved around to the left, sloping down steeply. Maissel strode away into the darkness without hesitation, and Maela had to hurry to catch the narrow back with her light before it was subsumed entirely by gloom.

"What is this place, chandler?" she asked from his side, her quiet voice seeming a shout in the stillness.

"A place of secrecy and safety, Maela," he answered gravely. "A place I expect you to have enough honor not to betray; a place I know you have enough honor not to betray."

"Betray?" she puzzled. "What is there to betray? Maissel -"

But her voice fell off as their passage leveled off to a small ledge, and onto the shores of an underground lake. Water glimmered blackly at their feet; a bitterly chill breeze drifted toward them from the pale mist floating above its surface. The natural cavern, with its toothy ceiling of stalactites, was low, but broad and deep, its far edges vanishing into gloom. Soft pulses of pale blueish light, much like her lantern's, glowed over the waters; the sporing bodies of Morrowind's Violet Coprinus mushroom. Their blinking bioluminescence was the only light other than the lantern in her hand.

"This is our cistern," explained Maissel quietly as he knelt by the wall, busying himself with something Maela could not see for peering out over the water. "The water from the well your people use on the heights seeps down here and collects, purer and sweeter for the journey. This is the source of the village's water; there are a number of small wells throughout the town, mostly in people's homes, whose shafts pierce the ceiling here."

Maela nodded silently, still gazing around curiously, but after a few moments her head cocked, and she turned slowly around to the kneeling chandler, a suspicious frown on her face.

"Do I take that to mean," she said slowly, "that you settled folk have been hoarding all the best water from my people for all these years?"

Maissel shrugged. "If you wish to look at it in that way. The Zainab have never asked to use our wells, and we have never offered. Is that hoarding? Perhaps the Zainab will consider more trade with the village for our water, now that their emissary has the knowledge."

"Perhaps," agreed Maela, carefully noncommittal. "Is that all, chandler? You wished to make this opportunity known to me? I thought you spoke of retrieving something, but I see nothing her to be retrieved."

"I did, and there is," grated Maissel, straightening up. Leather waders covered him from the chest down, held up by a loop behind his neck. They had an odd waxy sheen to them in the light. "This place is not just a well, at least not for me; here I store most of my products throughout the year, kept cool and preserved in the cold waters. We're here to retrieve a few things, so tie up your skirts, girl."

Maela's head drew back, shocked. "Tie up my skirts?!" she gasped.

Maissel stooped to snatch the second pair of waders from the floor of the ledge. "Yes," he answered, tossing her the leather garment. "Tie up your skirts. Unless you'd rather wait here until I return."

The waders hit Maela's side before she could recover herself. "Oh," she said. "Ok, then." She sank to a graceless seat on the smooth stone, setting the lantern aside. She gathered her skirts tight and knotted them tighter on themselves midway up her solid, muscular thighs. Then she stood, excess cloth hanging in a messy rope by her leg, her smooth calves and ankles exposed in the cold air, to thrust her legs into those of the waders and her head through their loop. The fit was not the best - Maela was significantly less tall than the average Maissel - but they stayed up and were not so voluminous that the girl could not walk in them.

"What have you put on these, fat mer?" she asked curiously, fingering the coated leather as she stooped to pick up the lantern again.

A wry grin revealed Maissel's long white teeth. "Dreugh wax," he answered simply.

"Oh, now this is too much!" exclaimed the girl. "Dreugh wax? You wish me to believe that you hunt the cephalomen? It is too much!" Her split lips were pursed skeptically.

Maissel shrugged. "The facts are the facts, Maela," he answered in his gravelly voice. "I am no great warrior, though, to go toe to tentacle with the sea-dwellers: I will not claim that." He stepped forward, splashing into the dark water.

"Then what will you claim, eh, chandler?" said Maela, following. "That the Dreugh bartered its wax to you in exchange for candles that burn even in the sea? How did you get it, if it is indeed the wax of the Dreugh that is keeping us dry?"

"Through cleverness," he answered. "Traps. Dreugh have as much a weakness for the musk of the shalk as anyone else, you know; a bit in the water at the right place and time is enough to draw them into shallow pools where the tide will trap them. A net to remove them from the water, and the job is done; they perish without the sea to breathe, and I do not even strike a blow." He spoke with quiet confidence in his own skills.

Maela was silent for a few moments. Then, in a subdued tone, she said, "That is an inventive snare, fat-smith."

Maissel made no response. The two continued on, in silence except for the water’s sloshing around their knees with each step. The cistern was shallow for the most part, only reaching to the chandler’s belly and Maela’s briast, but there were clefts hidden in the dark water that plunged much deeper, and Maissel was careful to keep the girl close at his side so that she did not meet them; he knew the safe passages of his secret storehouse. The water was freezing, chilling the waxed leather against Maela’s bare legs, and their breaths fogged in the cool air above. Maela’s fingers grew numb on the handle of the lantern. On all sides were the hanging stalactite teeth, sprouting with stubborn glowing Coprinus, and here and there were stonemold support pillars.

As they went, evidence of the chandler’s use of the place became more and more visible. Long lines of oiled casks and kegs bobbed in the dark waters, disturbed by their movement. Barrels floated gently along ahead of them, looming out of the gloom in the lantern’s pale light. Here and there a stalactite had been hollowed out into shallow shelves and stacked tight with crates and boxes. Iron hooks had been pounded into the sides of many, the anchors for the long ropes stringing together the bobbing containers.

“You have a crowded storehouse, Maissel,” murmured Maela, sounding impressed.

“I keep busy,” he grated back. He drew to a halt before one of the stonemold pillars, his hands fumbling in the dark over its surface. His fingers found an incised mark in the stone by one of the hooks, and he slipped the rope’s loop free.

“These are what we came for?” asked the girl, standing on the tips of her submerged toes to try to see how far into the dark the string of small kegs bobbed.

“Not all,” answered Maissel, shaking his head as he drew the loop around his wrist and turned to slosh farther on into the dark, fungus lit lake. “In these is guar tallow, aged for three seasons.” Maela nodded her understanding, and followed him, shivering in the cold water with the line of containers making its wake at her side.

Maissel reached back suddenly after they had gone a few minutes more in silence, catching her arm and drawing her in front of him. A long stretch of dark water like a corridor faced them, small dark orbs floating gently across its surface.

“Go carefully here,” he rumbled quietly in her ear, his broad, callused hands on her bare, cold-pimpled shoulders. “The way is very narrow. I will guide you.” His hands pressed, and she waded slowly through the dark water, her feet on a slim rim of rock beneath the black surface, a deep chasm to either side. She would be very wet and cold indeed if she slipped. The chandler guided her silently, until their path turned a corner and ended in a small alcove where a great many redware urns floated, corralled together by a rope strung from wall to wall.

Maissel let go her shoulders and began sorting through the urns, muttering to himself. Maela waited, holding the lantern out helpfully.

“So what’s in these?” she asked when the chandler had at last selected three of the small urns and scooped them out of their confinement.

“Wax vinegar,” he grunted in reply. His grey-maned head was bent as he worried at the rope tied to his wrist, looping it securely around each urn to shackle them into line.

Maela suppressed a sigh. “And what is that, fat-smith?”

“Wax made from vinegar,” he answered helpfully. “Or vinegar, made from wax. Take your pick.” His glowing red eyes caught the lack of amusemant in hers, and he elaborated. “The Llothases make the mazte in Vos – at the other end of this cavern, actually – but the saltrice, it sometimes does not ferment correctly, or the mazte goes bad, and turns to rice vinegar. The Llothases send their vinegar to me, I mix it with the wax I boil out of kwama shells, and the oils of the fire fern, the violet coprinus you see all around, or the gold kanet flower, and then allow it to ripen down here in the cold. When it is done, it is vinegar wax. Or wax vinegar.” Finished with his tying, he put out a broad hand to guide Maela back onto the narrow path to the rest of the cavern.

“And this vinegar-wax-vinegar,” she said to the mer at her back. “What do you use it for?”

“For coloring my candles,” he answered, “and the oils for lamps. You think that lantern burns blue on the scathecraw and guar oils its wick pulls? It does not; it burns blue for the coprinus wax vinegar mixed in. So now you have learned a few things more for the trade of the Zainab.” He grumbled down to the top of her head. She made no reply.

Maissel followed the diminutive Ashlander girl back across the narrow path, his guiding hands enfolding her chilled shoulders. Water dripped quietly behind them, and a distant howling wind echoed suddenly through the chamber from some crevice as they passed through the corridor waters, where floated the many dark orbs. One crossed their path, as they neared the passage’s end and the cistern proper, and Maela picked it up curiously in her free hand. She turned the dripping dark object over in examination, then craned her head around to the chandler.

“What are these?” she asked, gesturing with the orb to its fellows floating on the lake surface.

Maissel grinned down at her upturned, heart-shaped face. “That, Maela,” he said, reaching forward with one hand to take the orb gently from hers, “is quite something indeed. But let us hurry back to the house, and I will show you there; you are chilled.”

“I am chilled, he says,” she muttered, facing forward, “as though I have said one word of complaint! Methinks it is the scrawny old fat-smith whose bones are chilled.” But she hurried on, and the two passed swiftly back to the cistern’s shore, the string of urns and barrels trailing after. After they had removed their dripping waders, Maissel dragged their burdens out of the water, then up the steep curving passage, clattering and banging and bouncing along. Maela led and lit the way, and they both helped pile the whole stringed lot together just inside the wide doors to the cellar. Then the gates were closed, the cellar’s secret locked once more, and the two climbed the stairs to the dark ground floor, illuminated only by the feeble sunlight filtering in through the oval windows. Maissel set the odd orb on his stout, shining table, then hurried to the fireplace and began stacking kindling; the room was warm after the bitter chill of the cistern below, but it was still cold from a more typical frame of reference.

Maela let the lantern clink down on the tabletop and absentmindedly took a seat, examining the orb as she did so. It was the size of a large kwama egg, just small enough to grip easily in one of her small hands, and a dark, blood red. Its surface felt familiar, as a matter of fact…

“Is this your Dreugh wax again?” she asked, looking to the chandler where he knelt on the hearth.

Maissel shot her a glance over his shoulder, and nodded. “That it is. Dreugh wax, colored with the essence of the fire fern.”

“Why do you have a big ball of wax?” she wondered, turning it over in her hands.

The chandler chuckled as he straightened up from the catching fire. “It is only the outer coating,” he explained, crossing to the wooden hutch against the wall and fishing a long steel knife from a drawer. “What you have there is known as Royal Jelly,” he went on, returning to crouch by the fire again. He held the blade out, rotating it in the yellow-orange flames. “It is a delicacy, reserved solely for the most elite members of the Temple, and Almsivi Themselves; if, and when, they choose to experience food as mortals do, that is.” He stood again, the handle of the hot knife held carefully in his fingertips.

Maela looked unimpressed. “Only for your priests and gods, hmmm? What makes it so special? It looks like a lump of lard to me!” she said, brandishing it at him.

He snatched it from her hand, frowning. All he said, though, was, “Royal Jelly is very difficult to prepare. It requires the fat of many beasts; guar, netch, alit, kagouti, nix hound, and kwama.” He laid the Jelly back on the table, and carefully, ever so carefully, placed the tip of the hot knife atop its center. The blade dimpled the wax, and then slid through the Jelly, slicing it into two halves. They fell apart from each other, revealing a striped, white-green-pink-black-red-pink inside, a layered egg. “Each layer is stewed in a different brine for a year before the application of the next; each brine requires a different gemstone in the steeping. Each Jelly, consequently, requires six years to prepare, plus three to mature, before it is ready to be consumed.” He took one of the halves, and slowly cut a slice of solid, layered Jelly from its side. “Consumption of Royal Jelly by anyone not authorized by the Temple carries a sentence of heresy, and is punishable by imprisonment in the Ministry of Truth.” He held out the thin slice of fat.

Maela took it without hesitation. “These priests of yours, they are either very stupid or very jealous,” she said, looking dubiously at the slice of Jelly.

“Stupid or jealous?” laughed Maissel questioningly.

The girl nodded. “Stupid if they make such a fuss over something ultimately unworthy; jealous if this Jelly is truly such a wonder of sensation, and they do not share it.”

“Perhaps,” agreed the chandler with a shrug as he sliced another thin piece of the Jelly. “It is true; I have never been able to suss out their reasoning in this matter. I make the Jelly myself, and as far as I can tell there is nothing holy about it save the divinity of its flavor.” He took a seat across from her, peeling the red strip of wax from around his slice.

“We shall see,” answered the girl, following his lead. “How is it eaten? Just as it is?”

“For your first time, yes,” answered the chandler quietly.

“Well all right then,” replied Maela with a shrug, and tore off a bite of her Jelly with her fine white teeth.

For a second she simply chewed, tasting nothing, the jelly cold and rubbery, and she grimaced in distaste. Then the Jelly dissolved all of a sudden like a snow bank in spring, and her eyes nearly rolled back in her head.

Flavors swirled in her mouth like live things, inexplicable, indescribable, dashing down her throat and through the rest of her body; she was an instrument of savor, her whole being an organ of sensuality. It was a rush of warmth, a spiciness in her bones, suffusing her flesh. It filled her up with satisfaction, in all the little places she had not known she wanted for it. And then it was a quiet heat in her stomach, radiating out through her limbs and swaying over her skin. Her full lips curled in a broad smile.

She opened her eyes. Maissel was watching her, smiling amusedly. She was saturated with quiet energy. Everything was amazing; the little room, its golden glow, the gloriously gleaming grain of the wood under her fingertips, the brush of air over the tiny hairs on the back of her neck, the depths of the mer’s eyes in front of her, the gentle rhythm of his breath. All the thousand sensualities she usually ignored were suddenly beguiling, transfixing, beautiful and valid in the simplicity of their existence.

“Quite something, isn’t it?” asked Maissel quietly. His voice resonated deeply through her bones, and she shivered.

“Yes,” she answered, throat humming. The intensity of the sensation was cooling quickly, but it left behind a lingering contentment, a warm groundedness in her flesh. The beat of her own heart had never been more powerful or felt more right and true. “Is it like that every time?”

Maissel shook his head, nibbling at his own slice of the Jelly. “Only the first. Ever after it is just a reminder, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.” He nodded to the rest of the Jelly, held in her fingers. “Keep it wrapped tight and cool, and parcel the rest out over the next few days. It will keep that long.”

She nodded slowly, and he continued. “You should not eat aught else today, though. The Jelly is extremely high in energy. Our high priests use it during some of the longer rituals, when there is no time for a proper meal.”

“I can see why your priests value this Jelly so highly,” Maela replied. Her voice was slow, and peaceful. “Your living gods, too. But are you not in danger now, having shared this with me?” Her frown was serenely concerned.

Maissel shrugged, wide lips smiling across to her. “It will not be known, so I will not be in trouble,” he answered, picking up the two halves from the table. “Watch. It is easily hidden.” He stood, grabbing the knife and the strip of wax from his slice as well, then crouched on the hearth. He heated the knife briefly in the flames, then ran its tip along the cut edge of each half, between the wax and the jelly. He then inserted the strip of cut red wax in the gap of one half, and pieced them together. Another brief sojourn of the blade in the flames, and then it was pressed gently against the small bulge in the repaired Jelly, run all the way around the circumference until the wax had melted and was smooth all around. When he placed it on the table before Maela, it looked as if it had never been cut.

“Wow,” breathed Maela as the chandler resumed his seat. “That is quite impressive. But what would they do to you, if they knew?”

“The Temple?” grated Maissel. “For sharing the sacred Royal Jelly with one who does not recognize the holiness of Almsivi… well, I’m not sure, to be honest. If it were someone else, well, they might be imprisoned for a time. But I am one of the very few who makes the Jelly, and the only one on Vvardenfell. I doubt that they would risk a shortage of supply. Perhaps I would be called to the High Fane in Vivec city for a reprimand; probably little else.” He sounded remarkably unconcerned.

“You are not… uncomfortable, of yourself, with sharing this with me, even though I do not believe as you do?” asked Maela, puzzledly.

“Why should I be?” replied the chandler. “The Jelly is not holy, as I said. All of its ingredients are profane. The priest did not sanctify the sea water I used in the brine. I did not beseech Vivec for inspiration. I did not beg the blessing of Almalexia on the fat as I melted it. The gemstones that steep with each layer do not bear the divine enchantments of Sotha Sil. I do not include ash or fat from the ancestors. The entirety of the Jelly’s effect is due to an incredible recipe, and perhaps some slight alchemistry between the ingredients. There is nothing sacred about it, despite its uses, so I see no problem with sharing it with you, whatever the priests may say.”

He fell silent, watching Maela’s plump face as she stared thoughtfully down at the table. A log shifted in the fire, and a crackle of sparks flared.

“You are so strange, Maissel,” she said suddenly, looking up into his eyes. “You honor your ancestors, I know you do, yet you worship your – your living gods.”

“Where is the dissonance?” he asked politely, brow creased.

“I just – I just don’t understand how you worship them. They betrayed Lord Nerevar at Red Mountain for the acquisition of a dead god’s power, then supplanted the spirit guides of the Velothi in the hearts of the settled people and assumed their spheres. They – mortals – presumed to treat with Azura and Boethiah and Mephala as superiors. I’m just – trying to understand how you can worship three people who could do things like that. And failing.”

“If the things you said were true, then obviously I could not worship them,” answered the chandler seriously. “But Maela, what you speak is apocrypha, unfounded rumor most likely spread by the House of Troubles to disturb the Dunmer people. Almsivi have proven their hearts again and again and again to us; their power protects and succors us. If it was they who betrayed Nerevar, instead of Dagoth Ur, why has their long rule not been marked by similar injustices, by tyrannies and terrors?” The girl said nothing, but she looked uncomfortable. “Without evidence in their actions to support your claims, I cannot hold them true. The Three did not achieve Godhead through some profane sorcery of the Deep Ones. We believe that Almsivi ascended as a natural evolution of the Good Daedra, our ancient spirit guides. Those spirits had been too long from life, too distant from our people, though they were powerful. We believe that Almsivi embody the stage of spiritual life past that of the Daedra, of a return to flesh and intimacy with mortals while still retaining the power and wisdom of the spirit world. The Three are concepts that were growing in their Anticipations as those spirits inspired Veloth in ancient times and led our ancestors to this land. Azura, Boethiah, and Mephala as they are today are but the husks of chrysalis, still to be revered for the function they served and their shelter of our people, but they are necessarily secondary to the Living Gods. To worship Almsivi is thus the highest expression of reverence for our ancestors; for we must always give greatest honor to our best ancestors, and in this the Tribunal have surpassed the Daedra. To fail to honor Vivec, Almalexia, and Sotha Sil, or to place the Daedra and other ancestors before them is to spit in the face of the core of spiritual reverence. You do not salute the evil or cowardly spirits, or place them before the brave and kind. To do so would be to belittle the honor you do to those worthy of it. Thus do we worship Almsivi above all.”

Maela shook her head when he finished, an incredulously wry smile on her lips. “Are you sure you are not a priest in fat-smith disguise?” she said.

Maissel let out a rocky laugh, the tough lines of his narrow face bending around his wide, fond smile. “Quite sure,” he chuckled. “Just dedicated. I was taught to show respect to my ancestors, to give thanks for their guidance and sacrifices, and I hold to that creed. The Tribunal is a natural extension of the ancient Velothi faith that you follow.”

“If you concede that the stories of my people concerning their origin are false,” hedged Maela. “Which I do not.”

The chandler nodded agreement, still smiling. “Yes, if that is conceded. But as I said, the Three have shown no evidence in their behavior that they are betrayers and leeches, so it is most likely not true.”

Maela opened her mouth, frowning, but Maissel forestalled her response laughingly. “I know, girl, I know; I do not expect you to reject your people’s history. Let us leave off this subject. You have had your treat; we should be returning to work.” The girl nodded her acquiescence.

The ground floor was vacated, the lanterns extinguished and the fire damped to a low amber glow, and the chandler took his guest once more down to his cellar. It was time to begin the work that was his trade’s namesake; the making of candles. Tallow would be melted and mixed with the wax vinegar, scented with anther or kanet or stoneflower for use in the home, pungent bittergreen for use in the Temple, bug musk for use in the bedroom, then poured into molds around dried wickwheat stalks.

The chandler made one more trip down to his cistern before beginning his work, to return the waxed orb to its chilled storehouse. Maela caught his arm as he stepped through the gap between the iron banded doors. He turned questioningly, looking down at her large eyes, her heart-shaped face.

Her dimpled cheeks colored violet. “I wanted to say – thank you,” she whispered shyly, not meeting Maissel’s eyes. “For sharing your Temple’s special treat with me. You are a very kind mer, Maissel.”

The chandler’s eyes smiled. “Of course, Maela,” he said. One broad, callused hand came up to squeeze her round arm briefly, just above the elbow. “It was a pleasure.”

AN: Classes start Tuesday, so updates will be less frequent.

Part Two: Ayem

Chapter IX

Chana had waited. And waited. Two days. Three days. Seven. Over a week, she had waited; waited for her chandler to fulfill his promise and call her to his side. Filled with determined faith, she waited; through her shadow puppet chores, her rote daily grind, the rifling pattern dinner conversations with her parents, the sleepless nights of obsession. She was the embodiment of the patience her intended had asked of her.

But Chana was done waiting. It had been over a week. Nine days she had let that fat chit sleep in her mer's home; nine days she had held herself back; nine days the girl had had to conclude whatever legitimate business she might have had; nine days Chana had tortured herself with the illicit business the barbarian might have been conducting with her chandler. Her endurance was exhausted; she had had enough. There was absolutely no legitimate reason for that girl to still be in Maissel's house after so long, but he had not sent for her, so there the girl must remain. What kind of negotiation between two individuals required more than a week to enact? No; there was something more going on, something dangerous, something dirty. Chana could almost smell the oily muck of the girl's disgusting schemes seeping out from under the door of that tower house, boiling and bubbling in the cellar.

Not that she thought her mer had succumbed, of course. She had been laying plots about him for years and the mer was still infuriatingly impervious; no one could break through his defenses in just one week, oh no no no. Not even a girl like that, she told herself, not even one of those womer. She could not have made explicit what she meant by those womer, or how she was any different from they, but she knew, in her bones, that they were; they were on completely separate pages of the book of life. Those womer were dangerous; those womer destroyed households; those womer had shamefully active libidos; and this Maela was one of those womer. But not even one of those womer would be able to seduce her chandler in little more than a week; the feat was simply impossible.

Still, he would succumb eventually - mer always did, with those womer - so there was no question; something had to be done about the situation. And that something would not, could not, be her mother. The situation had changed; now there was a competitor in the picture. She would never again be able to look Alimah in the eye if her sister learned that Chana had wilted so pathetically at the first sign of an alternative feminine interest in her mark. No, to bring her courtship to her mother's attention at that time was completely out of the question.

So on the ninth night, the night that patience perished, Chana wrapped her night gowned self in a thick black cloak and left her parent's home when the moons were high in the sky and the bitter winds howled through Vos' empty streets, determined to do whatever was required to remove that girl from her chandler's home. She had no thought for price, or consequence; measured against her determination, they were of unsurpassed irrelevance. She cast her die.


Maela and Maissel were at the stout mushroom table when the knock came. They looked up from their silent breakfast of hearty saltrice porridge, with twin expressions of disgruntled surprise. The chandler set his spoon against the side of his bowl and got to his feet, muttering unintelligibly.

"Good morning, Maissel," was the grave greeting when the door was opened on the grey morning.

"Good morning, Gunaz," echoed back Maissel in surprise. And indeed it was Vos' ranking priest standing there on the chandler's cold doorstep, in his plain blue robes and grey tabards; Gunaz, the priest who had run Vos' spiritual life for nearly all of the chandler's years there. His black eyes were solemn over his high cheekbones and pointed chin. Behind him, they youthful face of his apprentice, Yakin Bael, was stooping and craning and stretching in futile attempts to see past Maissel and into the room beyond; his red hair bobbed frenetically.

"Do you need some assistance, Gunaz?" asked Maissel in sleepy confusion.

The priest shook his head, thin white hair flapping in the cold breeze.

"No, no assistance. I'm afraid I have come on a less pleasant errand. May we step inside?" His eyes were politely, but firmly, authoritative.

"Certainly," granted Maissel after the briefest of pauses. He stepped back from the doorway, and the priest and his apprentice entered the snug little room. Yakin closed the door behind himself with a click. Maela was watching curiously, seemingly unperturbed... but there was a knife missing from the block on the hutch, and her right hand was hidden at her side.

"This is Gunaz, our priest, and his apprentice, Yakin Bael," explained the chandler to Maela. The girl nodded silently to each, and Maissel turned back to the priest.

"Gunaz, this is Maela, daughter of Harah, who is Wise Woman of the Zainab Ashlanders. She has been sent by her people as a trade emissary, and is my guest until-"

"Indeed, I know of your guest, Maissel," broke in the priest gravely, frowning down at the girl, "for her presence is the impetus of my own. The Temple wishes to know why you are harboring a heretic, chandler."

The grey haired mer's brow drew together stormily. "Excuse me?" he grated, disbelievingly.

Gunaz met his hard gaze simply, unperturbed. "You have a heretic in your home. The Temple does not approve."

"The Temple was not asked," rumbled Maissel. "She is here by my choice; I have the right to guest whomever I wish. Those choices are not the Temple's to question, as my guest is not a criminal or a follower of the House of Troubles."

"But she could be!" burst out the red haired acolyte suddenly, his skinny fists clenched bombastically and his face flushed. "She could be a spy! She could be a thief! She could be planning to murder us all in our beds in the name of Dagon! She could have -"

"Silence, Yakin!" barked Gunaz, scowling fiercely at the boy. "Hold your tongue!"

"The Zainab do not wish harm upon your little village, priestling," put in Maela, glaring fiercely at the purple faced boy.

"Be that as it may," said Gunaz, raising his voice over the nearly apoplectic string of doubts pouring from his apprentice's mouth. "You are not one of us in this village; you do not believe as we believe. She is not welcome here, Maissel; you should have known that."

"She is not welcome?" growled the chandler fiercely. "She is not welcome? She comes to facilitate trade, trade that will benefit both our village and the Temple's coffers, and she is not welcome? I say she is welcome! I say that she will stay until she chooses to leave!" Muscles flexed in his jaw as he glared at the priest. Maela sat blank faced and cool through the chandler's tirade, but there was a violet flush in her plump cheeks by the time he had finished, and she looked away, her still unhealed lips tight.

Gunaz sighed wearily. "Now just calm down, Maissel," he said gruffly, reaching out to put a hand on the chandler's stiffened shoulder. "Perhaps - perhaps we should talk this over in private. You'll excuse us if we step outside for a few moments, muthsera?" he shot at Maela's guarded countenance. "Good. Yakin will keep you company. And he will keep his mouth shut," he added forcefully, cuffing the boy's ear. "If you please, chandler." He beckoned to the door.

The two older mer stepped out into the cold, blustery morning, leaving the two younger in the warmth, Yakin to his intent glaring, admonishing the girl for her presence, and Maela to her troubled, scowling reverie.

"Now, Maissel," began the priest reasonably, hands on the chandler's shoulders, wise black eyes fixed on him sternly, white eyebrows climbing his forehead, "I want you to think, and think hard here. You are a mer of faith, I know. That girl in there is a heretic; she believes vile slanders against Almsivi. If you support the girl, you support her heresy. Can you do that, in conscience?"

Maissel whispered fiercely back, his red eyes staring into the priest's. "That girl is in trouble, Gunaz. I don't know what, but something has come between her and her people. I revile her heresy, but there must be sympathy for the harmless unenlightened. Did not lord Vivec take pity on Mehrunes Dagon in battle? Does He not admonish us to give freely of our wealth? What I do for that girl, I do by the Graces of Courtesy and Generosity, and will continue to do until Almsivi Themselves tell me different."

Gunaz sighed, and the wind sighed with him, cold and sharp through the streets. "In trouble, is she?" he muttered. "Well. Well. The Graces... well, yes, I suppose if you look at it in that way..." His reluctant tone did not imply an enthusiastic shift of perspective. "Hmmph. Generosity and Courtesy are Graces, so if your actions toward this girl fall under their purview... well, you have demonstrated your dedication, Maissel. Let the Temple shelter her now, until she is ready to go."

"Impossible," growled Maissel tersely. "It cannot be done. This is a matter of honor for the girl, Gunaz. I have not brought my understanding of the situation to the open with her; it would shame her for anyone to know that there was something ill between her and her tribe, much less the entire village, as they would if you took her to the Chapel. I must keep her."

Gunaz sighed heavily, again. "Very well then." His voice lowered to a rough, severe whisper. "But there is a pitfall in this, Maissel, and I fear you may already have been snared by it. Tell me truthfully: have you known the girl?"

"Certain sure, I have not," answered the chandler unflinchingly.

Gunaz patted the mer's shoulder approvingly, drawing back slightly. "Good. Good," he said, nodding. "Keep it that way. Care for the girl yourself if this is the way it must be, but do not let yourself be snared into sin by her youthful body."

Maissel nodded once. "You will keep her presence here circumspect?" he asked quietly. "Only more trouble will come if others know."

"Of course," answered the priest's rocky voice. "The village need not know. But do not expect it to stay hidden long, Maissel, whatever I do. This is Vos, after all, and besides my apprentice is aware of the situation." He shook his head in exasperation. "No doubt he has attempted an exorcision by now," he added, turning to the chandler's door. "That, or a pass at the girl's body. Best not to leave them alone any longer."

The two reentered the warmth of the house, a welcome relief after the chill of the winter morning. Maela and Gunaz' apprentice had seemingly not moved the entirety of the time their guardians had been withdrawn; Maela still held her seat at the stout table, and robed, red haired Yakin still stood a few feet away, glaring balefully at her. Something must have happened, though; the acolyte's cheek was livid with a violet imprint of a womer's hand, and there was a hint of a satisfied smile on Maela's chapped lips, a dangerous glint in her eyes.

"Time to go, Yakin," said the priest gruffly, oblivious to the evidence of violence emblazoned on the boy's cheek.

"Good," snarled the boy with an angsty sneer. "Come on, Ashlander. Time to go back to your yurts."

"She will not be accompanying us," said the priest swiftly. "Sera Sarethi spoke truly when he said that he has the right to guest whomever he wishes. The Temple will not interfere." The apprentice's jaw dropped. Maela's gaze turned to Maissel, shocked. His wide lips smiled tightly back.

But the priest was not done. He folded his arms over his chest, looking sternly down at the girl as he said, "Do not give me cause to regret my decision, girl. Respect our ways and stay out of trouble while you are here. Do not spread your vile Ashlander lies; do not blaspheme before us; do not incite others to sin," he stated forcefully. "Refrain from these things, and Vos will treat you well."

"Your words are insulting, priest," Maela growled back at him, "as your people's always are, but I will abide by your rules. I will not tell the past as the Zainab know it. Or criticize your fleshly gods."

"See that you do not," replied Gunaz grimly. He beckoned to his still floundering apprentice. "Come, Yakin. You have Sermons to read." His hand on the boy's shoulder steered him forcefully to the door. "A good day to you, Maissel," he said as the chandler opened the door. "You will have the soaps and candles ready in time for the Affirmation?" Maissel nodded, and the priest grunted approval. His hand pushed Yakin unceremoniously into the street before him as he leaned in close to the chandler to issue a final warning.

"Be careful, my friend. You are a lonely mer, underneath it all. Do not throw away your life and your faith on a moment's indulgence." He clapped a hand against Maissel's arm, and without waiting for a reply was off into the cobblestoned streets, striding along with his robes billowing in the winds, Yakin scurrying in his wake.

Maissel closed the door slowly behind him, pensive. Behind him, the fire crackled quietly, dying down from the blaze to which he had built it before their interrupted breakfast. He turned, and Maela was watching him, her heart shaped face supported on her hands, cheeks pillowed on her palms, her eyes serious and mouth grave.

"My apologies," said the chandler quietly in his rough voice.

Maela raised an eyebrow. "Apologies?" she said quietly.

"There was no call for that," he explained, approaching the table. "I'm just sorry that you had to put up with Gunaz' mischief and that of his apprentice."

The girl blinked up at him slowly, then lowered her red eyes to the table. 'I... do not think you need apologize," she murmured to the wood. "You have defended me before your own spirit-mer. What else could a womer ask?"

The chandler just shook his head silently in reply. He sank back into his seat across the table, not looking at Maela and pretending obliviousness to her eyes on him. His half eaten saltrice porridge was a decidedly unappetizing greyish mass congealed in the bottom of his bowl.

"Did the boy bother you?" he asked at length, toying idly with the wooden spoon in its bowl.

The girl's bare shoulders shrugged. "He... tried," she said slowly, looking up from the table. "He... worked his words in harassment, a little. My lips, again," she explained, shaking her head and touching the splits in the soft flesh gently with the tips of her fingers. "He thought the same as the Chana-girl; that these had more experience in osculation than their age warranted. What is it with your people and leaping to unfounded conclusions based on a bit of wind-wound?" she asked rhetorically. "I had never heard that kisses could wear out a set of lips, before I came here."

The chandler shrugged, his eyes still on his bowl. "I would not know," he said quietly. "But that reminds me. I have something for you." He got to his feet again, still not meeting her eyes.

"Something for me, chandler?" Maela said, reservedly surprised. "What?"

The chandler did not answer; he was busy rummaging through the drawers of the hutch against the wall, shoving his wooden forks and spoons aside as he searched. At last he found what he wanted, and turned back to Maela. He handed her a small, round metal tin, battered and bent from long years of use.

"What is it?" repeated Maela, turning it over curiously in her hands. She popped the thin lid off the top; it was filled with a ruddily translucent substance, a greasy cream.

"Aerated scathecraw oil," answered the chandler. "To protect your lips from the sun and winds, and help them heal. I use it all the time when I am out in the wilds. Just... " His long fingered hands rose awkwardly, gesturing to her lips almost avolitionally. "Just - rub it into your lips every day, and you should heal more quickly."

"Put it on my lips?" she murmured incredulously, looking up at the chandler. "What an odd idea, fat-smith. How does oil help? But very well. How do I do it?"

Maissel snorted, too loudly, as he sat once more. "What do you mean, how do you do it? Just scoop some out and rub it into your lips, girl."

Maela shot him a cool glance, but made no comment. Her young fingers scooped through the greasy cream slowly, and then rubbed the palely ruddy dollops uncertainly over her lips. She winced at first, but then her expression changed to surprise, and she smoothed the grease over peeling and split skin with more vigor.

"Impressive, fat-smith," she said, placing the lid back on its tin and holding it out to him. "You did not include anything but scathecraw oil? The feeling is very cool, and soothing."

"A hint of bittergreen," he answered gruffly, waving the tin back to her. "And keep it; it was a gift. I have more."

She smiled up at him, lips glistening in the lamplight. "My thanks, chandler. You... you are very kind to me, Maissel," she added in a quieter voice, lowering her eyes shyly. Her small fingers rubbed idly across the lid of the tin. "It surprises me, that oil can be used for healing in this way. You are healer, as well as candle maker and preparer of Royal Jellies." She looked up at him through her eyelashes, red eyes glowing. "Your trade is very versatile, fat-smith."

Maissel looked awkwardly away from those entrancing eyes. "I would not call myself a healer," he replied gruffly. "I work fat. I follow the formulas as passed down through my fathers and forefathers, work as they worked. That is all."

"All it is, perhaps," murmured Maela, watching the chandler with quiet intent and a tiny frown creasing her smooth brow, "but you should not say that as though it is also a small thing. Your craft is very powerful. You have shown me that. Without meaning to, I think."

Silence breathed in the dimly golden room in the wake of her words. Maissel, too embarrassed by praise and preoccupied with the priest's admonitions to respond naturally; Maela too pensive, absorbed in her reserved, almost troubled, reverie, watching the chandler.

At last Maissel pushed out his chair and stood. "Better get to work," he said. "The candles need to be done soon. Ready girl?" He held out a wide, callused hand.

Maela studied it for a moment. Then she looked up into the narrow, weatherbeaten face of its owner, and nodded. "Of course I am ready, fat-smith," she said, laying her hand in his and getting to her feet. "Do you think I am here to laze about like one of your settled womer?" Her tone was back to its normal playful acerbity.

Maissel grunted wordlessly and pulled her along with him to the stairs, a yellow paper lantern in his other hand, plucked from the rafters to light their way in the cellars. Then it was work; the last batch of candles they had prepared still needed to be removed from their molds. They saw to that while the tallow was melting over the chandler's Dwemer stove for the next batch, stacking the solid blue wax cylinders in racks along the walls. They were silent as they worked in the cellar's cool belly. Maissel was more taciturn than usual after the morning's interruption, even after they had fallen again into the rhythm of things, and Maela quickly slid back into her own thoughts under the barrage of his monosyllabic responses.

After a while, though, she spoke. Her voice was quietly serious in the dark.

"Are you engaged with that Chana-girl?" she asked without preamble, as she handed the mer a handful of candles.

"What begat that question?" replied the chandler, giving her a brief, measuring look.

Maela shrugged her dimpled shoulders. "I was just thinking about this morning. And the other day. And... that I have not been seen by your village. You should not have sent her away if she is your intended, fat-smith," she said, sounding remarkably remonstrative.

"She is not," he grumbled back. "Chana is a sweet, helpful girl, and I enjoy her company, but she has not spoken a single word to me of marriage. I am a little too old for her, I think," he explained. "She looks on me as an uncle, and truthfully, I do see her as something of a niece."

There was a strangled, choking sound from behind him, and the chandler craned his head over his shoulder in confusion. There was only Maela, shaking her head ruefully.

"What?" asked the chandler.

"Nothing, fat-smith," replied the girl, her full lips curving and shining in the lamplight. "I am simply marveling over the delusional old nix hound that tells himself he would rather watch the ripest guar from afar than sink his teeth into their flesh." She bent to pull a few more candles from their molds.

Maissel frowned. "Excuse me?" he grated.

"Never mind, Maissel. An old Ashlander saying. So Chana sees you as an uncle, does she?" She passed him another handful of candles.

"Yes," he answered slowly, returning his mind to his work as he took the candles from her hands. "I believe Chana and I agree on that. We have an understanding."

Maela's belly laugh echoed in the dark cellar. Could she have heard the chandler's words, Chana's sobs would have done the same. If there was anything clear to Chana about her relationship - or lack thereof - with Maissel, it was that they did not have an understanding, did not approach even a modicum of mutual mental awareness. The point had just been driven forcibly home to her almost directly over her Chandler's head in Vos' blustery streets.

Gunaz had promised that he would visit her Maissel first thing that morning and see to the removal of the Ashlands chit, when she made her visit to him in the Chapel while the morning was still new born. He had not been difficult to convince; he was a mer of simple faith and simple weaknesses. Chana had arranged herself by the front window of her home as soon as the sun had risen, his extracted promise in her heart, wrapped once more in her blue dress, simultaneously concealing and broadcasting the glowing hope suffusing her flesh. One last bit of waiting for poor beleaguered Chana, just a few more hours before that roly-poly little [censored] would be gone from her mer's house and Chana would appear, a miraculous boon to be unwrapped before the fire by Maissel's warm hands. The girl thought she needed more curves to her hips? Ha! She would change her tune when she learned that it was Chana's lanky legs and pert briasts in Maissel's hands instead of her own overripe flesh. Ha! So she waited, just a few hours more, watching. And - aha! - there were Gunaz and Yakin in their billowing robes, Yakin's gaping open in front revealingly; well-endowed he might be under normal circumstances, but the winds were far too chilly that day for the sight to make any particular impression upon his watcher. She perched on the edge of her chair, barely touching, tenterhooks of anticipation prickling the skin of her skull beneath her scarlet hair. There they went, off to her mer's house, her house, her little minions off to do her bidding, to rid the stolen fortress of its vile sorceress occupier. They would do their duty; they would cast out the interloper; they would champion her suit all unknowing! Sunlight flooded down into the plaza, cold, grey winter sunlight, but sunlight nonetheless and a fitting herald of her finally dawning aspirations.

And then they were back again, in the plaza once more on their way to the chapel, and she did not care that the girl was not with them and had not yet been seen in her slumped walk of shame back to the rest of her barbaric people; they were back, they were victorious, and she was on the resplendent road to triumph! She jumped to her feet, knocked her chair to the floor in her haste, wrapped herself in her black cloak and dashed out her door and into the cold plaza, socks and slippers forgotten by the wall.

"Oh, oh, sera, priest, Yakin, wait a moment!" she called, waving an arm as her long toed feet pattered over the freezing flagstones.

Gunaz turned at her call, the deep lines around his firm mouth hard and grave. Yakin turned too, and quite abruptly flooded an alarmingly bright shade of mauve in the face. No one could blush quite like Yakin. Chana was well acquainted with the various shades of his face; he always seemed to be blushing around her. Not that there were any other young womer in Vos to blush around.

"Good morning, muthsera," said Gunaz solemnly as she slid to a breathless halt before him. "Is something the matter?" He had noticed her bare feet, and was eyeing her with concern.

"Oh, no!" laughed Chana gaily. "Nothing is the matter! I just was wondering if your errand this morning was to Maissel' - Sera Sarethi, that is - to his house."

Gunaz sighed. "It was," he answered.

"And?" Chana prompted expectantly. "you didn't find the Ashlander chi- girl still there, did you?"

"We did indeed," rumbled Gunaz. He began walking once more, striding slowly to the chapel with Chana at his side, Yakin following in love-struck silence.

"So I suppose she's gone then," said Chana, not quite managing to hide her sunny approval.

The priest shook his head. "No."

Chana's heart missed a beat. "Then she is packing?" she posited.

Again the priest shook his head as they entered the chapel courtyard. The wind bit suddenly chill through the folds of Chana's dress, raising prickles all over her body.

"She is there still," explained Gunaz, not looking at her. "Maissel explained the situation to me, and I have given my blessing. She will be there until further notice, I suppose."

She stopped breathing. She stopped moving. She stopped thinking. She froze in mid step in the chapel courtyard, as still as though she had been taken out of time. The priest turned back to her, when he noticed her absence at his side, his brow creased in worry.

"Chana?" he said. "What is wrong?"

"Muthsera?" came Yakin's anxious voice at her side. "Master, she's not breathing."

But the words became false as he spoke them, for she was breathing again, breathing faster and faster, her briast heaving frantically, the bitter air pumping through her freezing lungs, in, out, in, out, in out in out in out inoutinoutinoutinininininin until the morning was suddenly very dark indeed with swirling black stars.

"Catch her Yakin!" came the priest's grating voice as though floating on the wind, and then, with a thwump, there was something soft beneath her and she was staring up unblinkingly at the grey-blue sky.

"Incompetent lout," snapped Gunaz. "You're supposed to catch the womer, not break their fall." His lined face appeared above her, and he laid a hand on her forehead. There was a sudden cooling, and some of the tense numbness drained from her.

"Are you all right, girl?" asked the priest gently, helping her sit up.

"Oh, yes, I'm fine," answered Chana, her voice unnaturally high as she stared unseeingly down at her knees and long bare feet. "I just had a moment of lightheadedness, that's all. Nothing to worry about!"

"Are you sure?" said the priest dubiously, crouched on the stone. "Why don't you come along with us to the chapel and take a little mulled mazte to settle your nerves."

"No, no!" chirped Chana falsely, pushing herself to her feet. "I'm fine, really! I just need a moment to recover. You go on!"

"Don't be ridiculous, girl!" growled the priest. Yakin had pushed himself up on his elbows, groaning and patting his bruises. "We need to get you out of the air."

"No, really!" Chana insisted, still in that unnaturally high voice, "I'd like to stay! I find the cold air - bracing! Yes, bracing! Ha! I'll just take a rest on the steps here. You go on inside." She lowered herself to the chapel's stonemold steps, pushing away the priest's assisting arm with perhaps more force than was warranted.

"Well... if you're sure, girl," said the priest, taken aback. Chana nodded her pointed chin vehemently. "Well... all right then. You let me or Yakin know if you need anything, though, hear?" he said admonishingly, pulling his apprentice to his feet.

"Of course, I will!" squeaked Chana. "Good day to you!"

She managed to hold back the tears until the two mer and their worried, uncertain looks had vanished behind the chapel's engraved door. They came inexorably, though, as soon as the two were gone. Chana wrapped her arms around her knees on the stone steps and bawled into her best dress, the wind slapping her black cloak against her head and running its freezing fingers down her back, her bare toes going numb on the stone. The letdown had simply been too much, too harsh in the face of her glowing expectations. She sat, shivering uncontrollably, and stained her dress limp midnight blue with salty tears. In a few minutes she would collect herself like the tough young Dunmer womer she was; in a few minutes the anger would come to replace the hurt; in a few minutes she would begin planning her next move; but just then the only thing Chana planned to do was to have a good, long cry.

AN: Finally! Sorry, didn't get any typing done the entire first week of school. But the next section is fully written as well, so it should be up tomorrow night. Also: dramadramadrama

Part Two: Ayem

Chapter X

An itch was growing in Maela's skin. All the rest of her was smoothing and soothing and easing under the attentive ministrations of the chandler's rough voice and rough hands and tender care; the bags were gone from beneath her eyes, the droop of fatigue erased; a flush of vigor bloomed in her cheeks; the raw wounds of her lips were mending rapidly under the chandler's glistening grease; the pangs of banishment and betrayal were fading; but her skin grew ever more rough and irritable. It began slowly and without visible impetus; small patches appeared on her arms, her thighs, her spine, a white, chalky rash that itched maddeningly. It was most peculiar, coming as it did from skin that had been smooth and healthy, if dry, even when the rest of her body had been at its worst near the end of her lonely sojourn through the dry, cold wildernesses of eastern Vvardenfell. It was strange, it was puzzling, it was irritating but - at least for the first few days of its slow growth - it was inconsequential. Maela itched, and scratched, and said nothing to her caretaker.

The chandler and his ersatz assistant had done with the last batches of candles for the Temple, in those days; done with the melting, mixing, pouring, and waiting. The fruits of their labors were stacked neatly along the walls of the chandler's hummingly content cellar, their crates aromatic with anther, kanet, and bittergreen; Maela could only imagine how strong the smell would be when the things were burned. The chandler’s was a business to exercise the olfactory organs when it did not exhaust them outright.

But though the candles were for the moment finished, their days in the cellar were not. Always, there was the next task in the chandler’s unchanging cycle, the next bit of the wheel’s rim to visit once more, and the next new thing for Maela’s observance and participation. It was both comforting and disconcerting for the Ashlander, this troglodytic existence. Safe, in its secrecy; entrancing, in its industrial ingenuity; suffocating, so long without the wide, blue skies and Red Mountain in the distance; disquieting, in its monotony. She longed for the freedom of the open plains, the buttes and rocky gullies, the vast bowl of stars at night; she could not make herself leave the chandler’s side. She was simultaneously more content than she had ever been and utterly unfulfilled.

It had but little impact on her behavior, at least on the surface; Maela was well used to hiding the truth of her feelings, and the chandler showed no signs of having noticed the conflict in her heart. He worked as he always did; taciturn, efficient, helpful, educational, entrancing. He rummaged about through the dark cellar with all his usual focus on his work the day the last candles were completed, gathering the materials they would need for the next project. Maela sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the room, a yellow lantern by her side, watching Maissel dash here and there and entertaining him and herself with her pvssyr. Mostly herself.

“Well, I must say, fat-smith, I’m surprised,” said the girl impertinently, scratching idly at a spot of rash on her wrist.

Maissel’s head appeared at the edge of the circle of lamplight, leaning backwards from the rest of his busy body.

“Why are you surprised, girl?” he barked. “Have I done something odd or amusing? Don’t start on about my ash-colored underthings again! I told you I would see to the patches later!”

Maela giggled quietly to herself, covering her glistening lips with a hand. “I was not referring to your holy trousers, oh most immodest of fat-smiths, but to another kind of holy.” She shook her head, her messy bun bobbing as she laughed again silently.

The chandler grunted skeptically. “And?” he said. “I suppose you’re going to elucidate me on the other kind of holy, are you not?”

“Of course I am, fat-smith. It has to do with your work, not your sorry attire. It is a lack in your work that has surprised me.”

“A lack?” grated the mer, more seriously. “What lack?”

“We have prepared so many candles this last week, so many types of candles, and all for your Temple,” Maela explained, “but all of them have been prepared from a base of guar fat.”

Maissel ducked through the circle of light, arms full of pots, containers and utensils sundry, on his way to another part of the dark cellar. He frowned down at the seated girl as he passed.

“I repeat,” he said, vanishing into the darkness once more, “where is the lack in that? What else would they be made from?”

“Why, ancestor fat, of course,” answered the girl primly.

Maissel inhaled sharply, and choked. He coughed hard for a few seconds, then retreated back to the light to stare down at Maela and her plump curves.

“That is disgusting,” he growled. “Why would you say something like that?”

The girl shrugged, the dimples in her bare shoulders shadowed in the lamplight. “I have been expecting you to prepare such a thing, or something else of the sort, ever since we began this candle-making work. You use ancestor ash to prepare soap; why not ancestor fat for candles?” Her red eyes watched him calmly. One hand slipped around the other arm to scratch lightly behind its elbow.

Maissel pressed his wide lips together tightly. “It is not the same thing,” he said as he swung back around to continue his search. “To burn the fat of an ancestor – it’s disgusting.”

“No more disgusting than using their ashes to cleanse yourself,” replied Maela quietly. “It would be a way of keeping close to them; beseech the ancestors for light on occasions that merit it. Light a candle for spiritual guidance, that sort of thing.”

“My trade is not spiritual, girl,” grumbled the chandler as he reappeared, arms piled high. “I work fat. I do not contact ancestors. That is what priests are for.”

Maela shook her head, looking down at the folds of the skirts in her lap. “Everyone can contact their ancestors, Maissel,” she said, “and everyone should. There are a thousand ways to do it. I am the Wise Woman’s daughter; I know them. Who knows but that you could add another?” She looked up then, her red eyes deep. They caught the chandler, and he held them as he studied her silently.

At last he sighed, and gave a reluctant shrug of acquittal. “Other people contact their ancestors, girl, not me,” he muttered. “But perhaps you are right, nonetheless. It is a moot point. There is no ancestor fat, only ancestor ash. The fat of my father – and my father’s father were burned away long ago.”

Maela nodded her round chin. “I know,” she murmured. She watched him a few moments more, silent, her full bosom rising and falling with the depth of her breaths, then straightened her spine forcefully, pulling herself to the matter at hand.

“You are ready, then?” she said, nodding to the chandler’s load. She got to her feet without waiting for an answer, snatching the lantern from the floor and approaching Maissel. “What is it you have in store next for me? The preparation of Dres masseuse oils, I suppose.”

Maissel shot her a confused look. “The Dres allow no one outside the House to know their methods of preparation,” he said, “so no. Something a little more useful, I think; the extraction of waxes and oils from the leaf meat of the scathecraw. Come.”

He led her to the nook between vats where sat the small Dwemer stove. She took a seat without being prompted as Maissel set up his apparatus from its collected constituents; the large cast iron pot atop the stove, filled with water from nearby barrels, set to slow boil on the blue flames beneath; a great many long stemmed glass bulbs lying waiting on the floor beside; three bundles of scathecraw, dried and brittle, laid next to a sharp workman’s knife from his belt; a large, wood framed sieve of finely pulled steel wire.

Maissel crouched by the scathecraw, snatching up the knife and cutting the cords which bound the long, tough blades of the ash-grass. “Tell me, Ashlander,” he said as he worked, “do your people penetrate often into the Molag Amur or the other ashlands? Do you know of the scathecraw?” His blade snipped through the binding twine, and he moved to the next bundle.

“Do I know the ash-grass?” she asked scathingly, arching an eyebrow at the working mer’s back. “What, you think your people call us Ashlanders for nothing? The Zainab do not spend much time on the ash slopes, but time we do spend there. There is a pass in the western mountains which leads to –“ She broke off, coughing suddenly, but the bulging of her eyes was more of mental than physical distress. Maissel shot a look of concern over his shoulder, but she waved it off. “Well, anyway, we know of scathecraw,” she said when she had recovered herself. “It is tough and indomitable, and can cut the skin like hackle-lo if one is not wary. Not good to eat; the taste is not bad, but it is very disturbing to the stomach. Why should we not know of it, fat-smith? It is one of few; a plant must be very enduring indeed to survive in the ash of Red Mountain.”

“Indeed,” agreed Maissel as he cut the last cord and sat back on his heels. He held one of the long red-grey blades in one hand, his knife in the other. “That is why I have it here. The same things that allow it to survive also make it useful for my trade.” He laid the edge of his blade against the cut base of the leaf, and ever so gently began to peel it, stripping a thin, semi-translucent layer from the dried red-grey tissue. “The plant has a thick outer coating of wax, to seal away its precious moisture against the heat and the dry winds, and oily membranous compartments through the thick main vein of each leaf to prevent further loss should the leaf be damaged. They seal upon themselves when water is insufficient. “ He tossed the waxy peel aside suddenly and snapped the leaf’s central vein. It was pierced by many small hexagonal tubules, each one sealed off by a white membrane stretching across its surface. He held it out to Maela, who examined it with interest.

“I did not know that, fat-smith,” she said, handing it back. “We do not use the ash grass, ourselves.”

“Then I suppose we have found another way in which we could benefit from trade,” grated the chandler, as he began slicing thin sections from the end of the vein and dropping them into one of the waiting glass bulbs.

Maela’s plump, dimpled features grew subtly quiet. “I suppose so,” she answered, looking down to her itching wrist, away from the chandler. “What are you doing now?” she asked after a moment. “You have some way of removing the waxes and oils from the plant?”

The chandler nodded. “Of course,” he rumbled. One hand plunged into the darkness outside Maela’s circle of light and returned with a large clay jug. “Spirits, purified from mazte,” he said, setting it aside once more. “Add the spirits to the sliced plant, boil it a little bit, strain, and boil again,” he explained. He touched each part of the process as he spoke; the redware jug, the glass bulb, the pot, the steel sieve. “Simple enough,” he finished, taking up another leaf blade and setting to work.

“Simple, perhaps,” replied Maela dryly, “but confusing nonetheless. Why, chandler? Why do it this way? I would never have thought of using spirits.”

“Neither would I. My ancestors were more inventive, though. I simply follow their example.”

“But come, girl,” he said, cutting off her response. “Come apply your own hands to the task. There is much scathecraw here, and I have another knife.” He unsheathed the second blade at his belt.

“Am I your apprentice?” asked the girl, even as she moved without hesitation toward the chandler. “I have told you, fat-smith, I –“

The chandler cut her off with a sharp gesture of his hand. “Think of it in terms of your purpose here, girl,” he said. “You must have a thorough understanding if you are to be of use to the Zainab.”

The girl froze momentarily in the act of taking the knife handle from Maissel’s grasp. She frowned, plump lips tightening and brow creasing. She snatched the blade from his hand and settled on her heels next to him with a sullen look.

“Very well, fat-smith,” she muttered, “if that is how you want it. How am I to do this?” She snatched a blade of scathecraw from the pile, brandishing it in her plump fist.

“Carefully,” answered Maissel, impervious to her bombastic tone and looks as he moved to crouch behind her. He slipped his arms around her and enveloped her hands with his own. “It takes some practice,” he growled, his vibrating throat by her ear. He positioned her blade carefully. Maela’s face contracted to something approaching her Mask Perilous, but her eyes slipped shut. “Go slowly,” said the chandler, inserting the edge of the blade between the wax and the reddish leaf tissue, “and pull steadily.” The peel tore suddenly to a narrow strip, and he released her.

“That happens sometimes,” he said, taking up his own blade once more and returning to work, “but keep at it, and you will do fine.”

Maela nodded forcefully, her eyes still tightly closed and her white teeth embedded in her underlip. The chandler noticed nothing, and the expression fell away from the girl’s features as she opened her eyes to begin her work. It left behind it a grim introversion, and silence ruled in the cellar for some time, the two of them cutting and slicing and peeling in the relative dark, the lantern at their back making their shadows dance together on the walls of stacked kegs and barrels. The water in the cast iron pot had boiled before they were finished with the last of the leaves, and was rolling and steaming fiercely as they placed the occupied glass bulbs in the water and poured the spirits down their throats.

Maela spoke at last when the glasses were nestled snugly in their steaming bed.

“So how long is this part?” she asked, seating herself with a thump and a flap of skirts back on her stool.

Maissel took his own seat with more grace. “Not long,” he answered. “Just long enough for the wax to be removed from the plant.”

“And how will you know when that is, fat-smith?”

The chandler shrugged. “I will know.”

Maela rolled her eyes. “’I will know,’ he says. How am I to know, if you will not tell me?”

“I thought you were not my apprentice,” he replied, glancing at her slyly.

She nodded back primly, some of her normal impishness creeping back into her eyes. “Too right, I am not,” she said. “And I never will be.”

The chandler shrugged his shoulder with a grin. “If that is the case, then I am afraid you will never know,” he chuckled.

Maela stamped her bare foot pettishly, glaring across at the chandler. He ignored her, watching the steam billowing up from the pot with a tiny smile on his lips. The girl crossed her arms stubbornly, looking at him forcefully, attempting to press the answer out of him with pure willpower. After ten fruitless minutes of sitting with an impassive Maissel, however, she sighed and admitted to herself that her current tactic was not effective.

“Oh, very well,” she grumbled. “I know I won’t be your apprentice. But you could tell me anyway, couldn’t you, Maissel?” She smiled at him hopefully, dimpling her cheeks.

“Couldn’t,” parried the chandler without imprint. “It’s a trade secret, only to be passed on to one who would become a chandler, not to some Ashlander girl just supposed to be negotiating trade. And anyway, the time is now.”

He leaped from his seat to snatch the bulbs from the fire, and so did not see how his words struck the girl, how her fine mouth fell open, then tightened to an angry, hurt pout, how she flinched, and stared fiercely at his back. He did not see the glistening shine held forcibly to the corners of her huge red eyes. The chandler, consumed in his work, in straining the steaming red-brown contents of each glass bulb through the wire sieve, in returning the filtered solutions to their steam fogged containers, was completely ignorant of the new iteration of the Mask Perilous forming behind him. He did not see its greased and pouting lips, the rim of wet around its glaring eyes, the quivering tic in its smooth cheek, or the determinedly pugnacious set to its finely soft jawline.

“There,” he muttered lowly to himself as he settled the last bulb once more in the frothing waters. “Hand me the spirits, would you?” he asked, holding out a hand blindly. Maela moved mechanically; the palm was filled, the spirits poured into the boiling glass. “My thanks,” growled the chandler when he had done, setting the empty redware jug aside. “Well, not much left to it, now, just a –“

“I am banished from the Zainab.”

The chandler’s rough voice cut short. The rush of the Dwemer stove’s blue flames was the only sound in the gloom; the only sound exceptfor the dry air sighing from the chest of the grey haired mer and pumping from the deep, exaggerated contractions of Maela’s briast. Maissel turned his head ever so slightly toward her. One red eye glowed obliquely out of the dark.

“Permanently?” his wide lips murmured like gravel tumbling gently in the wind.

“No,” came the answer from between those luminous lips. “Until this year has done.”

Maissel looked away, down to the large hands clasped in his lap. Maela’s eyes watched him, unwavering in their determination. The mask had eased, noticeably, with her confession; the eyes no longer so wide, the lips more relaxed and statuesque.

The chandler spoke after a long moment. “For what were you banished?” he asked, his eyes still on his hands.

“For telling the Ashkhan he could go sire his sons on a shalk,” Maela answered without hesitation, “for I certainly will not be carrying them. And for loosening a few of his teeth in the telling.”

The chandler looked up at that, shocked.

“He didn’t – he did not try to push himself on you, did he?”

The girl tossed her head, bun bobbing. “What of it? I am plenty capable of protecting myself from a single mer. I am the Wise Woman’s daughter, fat-smith; I have the spiritual protection of all my predecessors to complement my own rebuttal. The only mer who will touch me,” she said proudly, her plump chin raised as she stared forcefully into his eyes, “will be one whose touch I want.”

Maissel nodded slowly, bowing his head. He leaned forward on his stool, elbows braced on his knees.

“Why speak of this now?” he asked quietly. “I knew there was something… but I did not wish to give voice to it.”

The girl scoffed quietly as she adjusted herself on her stool, shifting closer to the chandler’s side. “Why do I speak now, Maissel? Because you know only half of how to behave! You do not speak of the true reason for my presence here, but you shove the deceitful excuse in my face at—every—turn!” She punctuated the last three words with sharp pokes in his stringy bicep. “What else can I do but speak, if you will be so obtuse?”

The chandler frowned at her, catching her fingers in his as they poised for another strike. “I do not understand,” he grumbled, releasing her immediately.

Maela threw up her hands. “How is this?! He understands how holding his tongue saves my honor, but does not see that in carrying that politeness too far he brings more shame than that I wouldhave borne otherwise!” She exhaled heavily through her round, collecting herself before she went on. “Very well. I will explain it to you, mixed up ash-village-mer. You disguised my shame with your silence and lies; this is all well and good. You propagate my lies before your people; this does you honor. But then you continue forcing my nose in this lie, even when we are alone, instead of sensibly holding your silence!”

“What care you for lies?” barked Maissel. “You lied readily enough to me when you came here. What does it matter, if I uphold your own lie?”

The girl flinched. She blinked rapidly as she looked away. Only after a few seconds did she reply, her voice suddenly soft and subdued.

“You do not understand,” she said. “I could lie to you without remorse when you were simply a villager, an adversary to be thwarted, but now, when you have taken me into your home, shown me kindness, warmed me, hidden my shame, given me gifts…” Her hand dove into her belt pouch and emerged clutching the battered tin fiercely. “Do you not see how shaming it is for me to have lied to you now, when you have cast out your intended for me and defended me before your priest?” Her voice squeaked, and she nearly choked getting the words out. “When you shove that shame at me, what else could I do? You have pushed me to this with your ignorance, fat-smith. The shame of exposing my banishment is far less than the shame of knowing that I lied to you, Maissel. Now do you see?”

The chandler’s grey-maned head gave a tiny nod. Maela wiped her leaking eyes surreptitiously, watching his straight nosed profile against the steam billowing from the pot. He stood suddenly, to slide the hatch of the stove closed over the flames, cutting them abruptly off. He lifted one of the glass bulbs from the water; its contents were two layered, the top fluid and semi-translucent, the bottom opaque and viscous, and both a dull reddish brown. It was done, the wax and oils extracted from the plant.

“She is not my intended,” he grated quietly. His fist was clenched on the glass.

Maela laughed dryly, holding back a small sniffle. “Of course she is, chandler,” she replied. “That was why she bristled like a surprised mudcrab when she saw me, and why she was dressed to as much advantage as those bones of hers possess. She is your intended, whether you know it or not.”

“I choose that,” Maissel growled back, with real anger for once in his voice. The glass jerked in his tight fist. “I choose who I marry, not Chana.”

“Believe as you wish, fat-smith,” said the girl, laughing quietly, bitterly down into her lap, “but me, I think you will be engaged with her within two weeks of my departure. Your settled heart wants that settled girl whether you know it or not. And it – it is as it should be.” Her voice trailed into softness and silence at the end.

“Do not speak of what you do not know, girl!” barked the chandler gruffly as he burst into a flurry of activity, snatching their bulbs from the water and holding their necks between his thick grey fingers, pouring off the supernatant from each into a waxed redware jar. “You do not know me!”

Maela laughed at his back. “Wrong, am I?” She quirked an eyebrow disbelievingly. “Well, have it your way, Maissel. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I do not know you. In that case… I have another lie to confess to you.” She waited for a reply, a tiny curve to her full lips.

The chandler grunted. “Well, tell it, if you’re going to,” he grated in a surly manner, not pausing in his feverish work.

“I thought that I ought, just to get them all out of the way,” she said. “It was about that boy, the priestling. I believe I told you I slapped him because he said something about my chapped lips? Not true; I slapped him because he tried to do the chapping. Attitude changed completely as soon as we were alone; he was the paragon of awkward love. Do you deprive your priests of womer, or something? He was most inexperienced. No preamble; just launched himself at my lips as I sat there at your table. Quite unsafe to let loose around womer, you should know, no matter how cute he is. What’s the matter, Maissel? Is something wrong?”

He had frozen in mid action, hands poised in the air. His jaw was clenched, his teeth grinding with the pulsing muscles in his temple, but his narrow face was utterly blank.

“Nothing,” he snapped, and sprang back to work. “Nothing. Yakin is not a bad boy. It is only that he is very young, and very impetuous. It is good that you rebuffed him. He deserved what he got, the – he is a fine boy!” He growled fiercely under his breath. “He will make a good priest someday, and he is a fine, respectful, thoughtless young piece of mer-meat!” His hands jerked suddenly, and glass shattered loudly against the iron pot. Hot wax splattered on the stone tiled floor.

“Are you all right, Maissel?” asked Maela, rising to her feet in alarm. The chandler was stone still, staring down at the mess. She touched the back of his arm with her trailing fingertips.

He twitched gently away from her. “I am fine,” he answered at length on a heavy sigh. The tension had drained from his voice, leaving it quiet and weary. “Just a spasm of the muscles. These things do happen. It – might be better if I did not work further today, however. Wouldn’t want to ruin any more of my product. You do not mind, do you?”

“I do not mind,” said Maela gently, to his back.

The mer’s head jerked in a nod. “I thought you would not. We no longer need keep the fa?ade of teaching you something of my work at all, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” agreed Maela. “But… could you still show me things? Can I still ask questions? Later, I mean, not today. I am interested in your craft, chandler.”

He turned then, his wide hands stuffed in the pockets of his baggy brown trousers, wide lips curled in a ghost of a smile. “I can do that,” he said. The smile evaporated by degrees as he looked at her. “But – later, Maela. Today, I should – rest.”

“Of course,” whispered Maela with a nod. “Tomorrow, then.”

The chandler looked away, uncomfortably. “I… may be occupied tomorrow. For the next several days, actually. I believe there are a few large jobs around the village which require my assistance.”

The girl blinked up at him silently. “I see,” she replied at last. “All right, then. I will just amuse myself here, then?”

“Yes, that would probably be best,” answered the chandler, sounding relieved. He knelt down to begin clearing away the broken glass and congealing wax. “There are a few books in the front room, if you are interested. Or if not, feel free to amuse yourself in any other way you can find.”

Maela nodded, staring down at her bare toes. “I will. I suppose – I should go there now? You said you needed some rest.” She swallowed thickly, deliberately.

“That might be for the best. I will be sure to see you for supper, when the time comes.”

The girl’s head bobbed minisculely. She stood there a long moment, staring down at the rawboned, grey-haired old mer kneeling on the stones in his voluminous patched shirt and holy trousers. But he made no response, his eyes fixed determinedly on the floor, and so she vanished away up the stairs, skirts whispering over the broken glass.

They separated, from that time on. Maissel followed her path up the stairs when he had completed his little remaining work and tidied up the cellar, but he flew around the landing like a banking cliff racer, not even pausing to look in on her where she sat, silent and brooding, at his ancient table. He fled, up the stairs and through the trapdoor, to his windy eyrie, his flat topped roof. And there he knelt on the strength sapping stone of winter, head bent in ferocious, lip-twitching prayer. Gloom fell around him, rising up in a gloaming curtain from the west as the sun set in a scarlet haze over Red Mountain, and he prayed. He did not know the content of his prayers; his thought were feverish; words tumbled through his mind, seizing and catching in momentary fervent lucidity as he beseeched Almsivi’s grace, then flew away again from the lurch of his repetitive disjointed murmurings. He did not know for what he prayed, or whom, but pray he did, as the stars rose on all sides and Masser mounted high, as the winds slithered through his clothes and along his skin, as his face, his hands, his feet grew numb and his chest began to spasm avolitionally. He prayed as Maela waited, silent and sad below, staring blankly into the fruitless fire with her arms curled about her knees and the dry skin of her back itching furiously against her shirt, ignored. He prayed until the icy air had stolen all heat from him and both mind and body were as blank slates, or empty, frostily steaming vessels. Only then, his mind calmed, did he descend to the dim warmth of his home. Maela had gone, vanished to her cellar bed. Only as the chandler’s warming body tingled and prickled strangely back to life, and his throbbing too-large hands examined the dirty dishes of the girl’s dinner did he remember that he had said he would join her. He had prayed until he broke his promise.

But it was for the best. It was for the best.

AN: Some of this chapter can't be posted here. If you want to read those bits, you should do so on FanFiction.net. My account is PurveyorofPulchritude; the story title is the same. Feel a bit like I'm shouting to an empty theatre here, but oh well.

Part Two: Ayem

Chapter XI

The door opened noiselessly on the room’s dimly glowing lamplight. The incessant winds of winter had for once ceased; the chill air did not whirl into the chandler’s home. It breathed. Maissel closed dusk’s purpling bruise sky out behind him as he stepped inside. Maela looked up at him briefly as he appeared, and greeted him with a tiny, silent nod. She was at the stout, gleaming table as she usually was, leaning her plump cheek on her hand and staring morosely down at the swirling amber grain. One hand itched halfheartedly at the ash rash spreading on her wrist. So had she sat for much of the past three days, morning, afternoon, and evening, staring down with ever increasing melancholy into the ancient table’s hypnotic oiled pathways. Lonely days, by herself in the chandler’s chandler-vacant home. He had vanished, with mumbled explanations, into the forbidden confines of Vos proper; into its people. He rose early, returned late and exhausted; she barely saw him. He was taciturn in his tiredness, when he was there. They barely spoke. In silence, she was cloistered.

And she was strangely, disturbingly susceptible to the treatment. Maela was not a girl accustomed to sadness, or melancholy; she had a forceful will, a will that was much more inclined to bowl over an obstacle than to allow it to wound her. Through all her short life it had been her practice to banish almost without effort any weakness of humor. Yet as she sat alone in the fat-smith’s house day after day, trailing her fingers over his table, trailing her gaze over the place’s bare bones, snagging on the glaring protrusions of the thousand tiny changes Chana had wrought on the place, remembering the warmth and fullness of welcome and work, the dolefulness in her eyes grew ever more pronounced. There was no comfort for her, save the bits of contented remembrance she nibbled in the night, the bits of Jelly that gave her hope.

Her situation was not improved by the fact that the chandler was quite unchanged, on the surface of things. He spoke less to her, it was true, but he had always been reluctant to initiate conversation; and truth be told, she spoke very little herself, even when Maissel was in the room. It was too frightening; too much daring was required to do what she knew she would have to do, and for the first time in her life she found herself lacking in boldness.

But the chandler was changed. That he appeared not to be, that he appeared to hold in his oily heart no mutations from the simple villager she had first met, was simply his nature; with Maissel there was always a skim of a barrier around his inner self, a skim most took as the inner personality in fact. Maela had penetrated that skin, for a time, but it had been turned against her. Too, Maissel’s character was one of those which obeyed a simple psychological law to match the physical; the weightiest matters sank to the bottom, into depths invisible even to the possixr.

There were no large jobs being conducted by anyone in the village. The chandler had lied. The first morning after his long prayerful vigil, he dashed from his door to the home of Saravel Llothas and offered his services almost forcibly to the mer’s distillery. Llothas did not need assistance, but he accepted the chandler’s offer under the pressure of his fearsome red eyes. Such was the case with the Elvuls on the second day, and Vuroni Drenim at his apprentice-forge on the third. These were awkward jobs, for the employers. The chandler did not normally assist them with their own work; only butchering, when he came to collect the fat. He had never offered himself out like a young hired hand; why did he now? They were puzzled, and so they watched, with weighing eyes, as Maissel threw himself into the work. Indeed, more puzzling than the work itself was the ferocity with which he approached it, launching himself at the simplest of tasks with the industrial enthusiasm of a Hlaalu farm boy. He worked hard, at everything, using more than energy than he needed; hard enough to numb and freeze his mind, hard enough to fall into dreamless sleep when he at last returned home long after the fall of night. He rose before the sun, attacked his work, and returned in the dark. So it went for two days after Maela’s confession. On the third, Arasea Drenim saw him in the yard with her son. She ordered him home, and there was no question of disobeying the tough old womer when she had hammers in hand.

So there he was, standing in his own warm, snug house with dusk just falling and his muscles barely aching, staring at the girl seated at his table. He tugged the grey cloak from his shoulders, hung the oiled fabric on its hook by the door. His hands were cold; the skin was tough and inflexible with the chill, and ashy tendons stood out tightly, skeletally. He strode silently across the room, in front of Maela, to kneel on the hearth by the small fire and warm himself. The girl said nothing, did nothing; her only movement was the slight bob of her messy bun. Her black hair was clean, but dry and rough.

When the edge of the ice had been taken off his bones and his hands had been limbered by warmth, Maissel pushed himself to his feet to fetch a pot and clean water. Maela remained utterly silent. She remained silent as the salted water boiled and the chandler added two large, raw kwama eggs, as they cooked and were removed in turn. She remained silent as Maissel laid the table with his humble redware dishes, as he peeled and sliced her greyish egg, as he spread the slices thickly with dark yam butter, and as she slipped the hearty fare between her firm, healthy lips. She remained silent as the chandler laid a large clay jug of mazte on the hearth to warm, as he stood by the fire to consume his own scant meal, as he poured her a clay mug full of the dark, warm liquor. She remained silent until the warmth of the mazte had settled in her stomach and tingled out along her round, itching limbs, until only the dregs swirled in the bottom of her cup and courage overpowered the fear in her heart. Then – she spoke.

“Share this with me, Maissel.”

The chandler turned where he stood by the hearth, so his back faced the flames. He held a half-full mug of mazte between his large hands, still warming them. Maela had sat up straight on her chair, primly, legs crossed, her little palm outstretched simply. In it lay a thin, striated slice, like waxy cheese.

Maissel gazed down at her hand for a long moment, then up to her eyes.

“Royal Jelly?” he grated deeply. The girl’s plump chin nodded. “I am surprised you have any left.”

“This is the last.” The rest had gone to warm her in the loneliness of those last few nights.

“Then you should keep it for yourself,” replied Maissel. “I have plenty if I want it.”

“I’d like to share it with you.” Her red eyes were calmly implacable and otherwise unreadable.

The chandler shook his head. “I repeat; I do not need it. Keep it for yourself, girl.” He turned back to face the flames.

Maela’s voice was soft at his back. “Think of it as a gift. I know you gave it to me, originally, but I have so little to give, and you have given me so much. Consider – consider the sharing of the thing the gift, not the thing itself.”

Maissel took a long, warm sip of mazte as he stared down into the rushing flames and let her words sink through him. If she put it that way… he had heard that Ashlanders put great importance in gifts. He had something of a suspicion that if he refused a third time, the offense would be very great indeed.

“Very well,” he agreed, after a long pause. He faced the girl. “My thanks, Maela.” He extended one broad palm to receive his piece of the Jelly.

Maela ducked her head in a silent nod of acknowledgement. Her small fingers tore the striated Jelly into two parts, and she rose to her feet, ignoring the chandler’s hand as she moved to stand in front of him. She held one of the pieces before his lips. He frowned down at her sternly, but opened his mouth. Her fingers deposited the thin bit of fat on his tongue. She stepped back, laying the other piece on her own tongue and watching him. Maissel closed his mouth, and as he did so, the Jelly dissolved all of a sudden, and its beating, suffusing contentment spread down his spine and along his bones, radiating peace out through his flesh.

He opened the eyes he had not realized he had closed, to see Maela smiling broadly and warmly up at him. It took a few seconds to realize that he was smiling just as warmly and broadly back. Royal Jelly had that effect.

“Ahhh… truly, my thanks, Maela,” he sighed. “I needed that.”

“I thought as much,” said the girl, her smile taking on a hint of characteristic impishness. “But come, sit down with me,” she said, taking his arm and tugging him toward the table. “You have been too busy of late to talk much with me, or answer my questions.”

“Oh, I did say I would answer those, didn’t I?” said the chandler as he took the chair next to Maela’s. “My apologies.”

Maela waved them away, though her eyes went momentarily cold, like a shivering beast locked out of the stable. “No matter,” she said, “you have been busy. But I have you here now, fat-smith, so now you must hold good on your promises,” she added, mock-warningly.

“Well, then, what are your questions?”

Maela nodded her head approvingly. “Good. I like that, fat-smith. Well, to start, I would like to know about your family.” She laid her hands in her lap, waiting expectantly. Her fingers sprang almost immediately to her rash irritated wrist.

“My family?” said Maissel, taken aback. “Why?”

“Can you really know a mer without also knowing of his ancestors?” asked Maela rhetorically. “I want to know, fat-smith. You keep saying, ‘Oh, I am just doing things as my father and grandfather did before me.’ Well, I wish to know about these mer. And their wives,” she added quickly.

“And their wives,” muttered the chandler. “Well, all right then. But I warn you, it will be a dull lecture. They are not Zainab chiefs, my ancestors.”

“Of course not, Maissel,” said the girl. “I do not expect them to be.” One hand was tugging subtly at the hem of her blouse, pulling the fabric across her back to scratch the irritated skin there without being obvious.

The chandler nodded gruffly, then began.

“My father’s name was Aravel Sarethi. He was the chandler of Vos about one hundred and fifty years ago, for oh, say seventy years. I took over when he died, when I was still just a boy; only twenty three years old.”

“How did he die?” asked Maela quietly.

The chandler shrugged. “He wasted away,” he answered simply. “Lost the will to live. Grew weaker and weaker day by day after my mother died. One day I came home and –“ he clapped a hand on the table loudly, “there he was. Laid out solemn and peaceful like he knew it was coming.”

Maela’s eyebrows rose. “He loved your mother very much, then? You think he simply wished to join her in the spirit world? What happened to her, anyway?”

“She died in a raid by the Ahemmusa,” replied Maissel gravely, answering her last question. “The battle was between them and the Zainab, of course, as it usually is, with us the ‘soft’ little bonus prize in the middle for the sea-drinkers, but our sentries and guardians were out to keep our homes and lives mostly safe. I was there myself, just old enough to don armor and keep watch on the roof, a bow in hand. Mother was there, too, one of our warrior-womer who held the gates.” His eyes were far off, staring down at the mushroom table. “That was all they were supposed to do, mer and womer both – hold the gates. But for some reason my mother ran out into the battle, her skirts tied up around her thighs and her blades waving. Some who were closer say she was screaming something loud enough to deafen the battle. She vanished into the chitin-mold fray, but she must have called on the ancestors for protection because she was alive when I next saw her, and her blades were red. She was running up the path to the heights as fast as she could go, and then she was screaming, so loudly I could hear her myself, launching herself and her blades at one of the Ashlanders fighting among the Zainab yurts. She never reached him, whoever he was; an Ahemmusa arrow from below took her in the back.”

“An honorable death,” said Maela softly, touching Maissel’s hand gently. “You are wrong to call your family’s history dull. Her death was worthy of any Zainab. What was her name?”

“Ghanimah,” he grated. “And I know that her death was honorable; that is not what bothers me, not after so many years.”

“Then what is?”

“They couldn’t find her body,” he growled through gritted teeth. “One of the Ashlanders must have taken it by accident. She is not interred in our chapel, as she should be. It just – bothers me that she did not go to rest with her ancestors, that the Zainab or Ahemmusa may have left her for the nix when they realized she was not their blood –“

“They would not have done that,” Maela broke in sharply, but soothingly. “Not even the Salt-Mouth Velothi. They would have interred her according to our customs; separately, but with respect.”

“According to your customs,” repeated the chandler flatly, “but not according to ours. Well, be that as it may, I have never been able to commune with her, no matter how many candles I light. That, and the disturbing silence of my father, as well, whose remains are interred in our chapel – well. It was distressing, at first.”

“Of course,” said the girl, sounding horrified. “To not have your ancestors to call on – I am sorry, Maissel.”

The chandler cracked a smile at her. “Don’t sound so upset, girl. I have lived so many multiples of time without my parents as I lived with them that at times it seems I never had them at all.”

“Then… you do not remember much of what they were like?” whispered Maela, still horrified.

The chandler shrugged. “Not really. Neither were particularly warm parents, as I recall. Father, mostly because we could not understand each other, I think. The only way we could talk was through the fat. It made things – difficult. Mother – well, Ghanimah was warm enough, when she was home, but she spent so much of her time at the chapel. That’s part of what makes it so bitter that she could not be buried properly.” He shook his head roughly.

“I am sorry, Maissel,” repeated Maela earnestly. She sat in silence for a moment, watching his downcast eyes, rubbing her wrist slowly on her leg, then visibly shook herself out of solemnity. “But you have only answered half of my question, you,” she said, poking the mer’s arm sharply. “What of your grandparents?”

“My grandparents I know little enough of,” he answered, rubbing his arm and frowning briefly. “Theirs is a silent rest in the ash pits as well. Still, I suppose I can tell you what I know. My grandfather was called Gare Sarethi; his wife, Elnet. It is said that Gare was extremely brave and foolhardy in his youth, though I never heard explained how so. As for Elnet –“ He shrugged. “I know even less. Mother would not speak of her, so she was not spoken of.”

“Interesting, fat-smith,” mused Maela. “It seems you have some family mysteries.”

“Hardly,” replied the mer dryly. “Even common knowledge dies after nearly three hundred years, and it has been that long at least since my grandfather died.”

The girl shrugged in grudging agreement. “True enough, I suppose, unless you have an evil Telvanni around to act as historian. But anyway – so these two mer were your predecessors, hmm? Aravel and Gare Sarethi. And they were great, skilled smiths of fat?” Maissel nodded. “Well, what did they teach you?”

Maissel frowned. “What do you mean, what did they teach me?” he grumbled. “Have I not shown you plenty of that already?”

Maela waved a hand airily. “Oh, you misunderstand me,” she said. “I meant, what else did they teach you? You have shown me this lovely Royal Jelly – surely there are other things you know of equal wonder, things more suited for one of your opulent Houses than to this village or my people?” She stared questioningly at him, her hand rising absently to scratch the back of her neck, brushing aside a few frizzled strands of hair loose from her bun.

Maissel snorted. “What do you think I am, girl? I am a chandler; I make candles, not luxuries. Although –“ His eyes had caught on her hair, on its dryness and roughness, and he fell silent abruptly. His eyes bored into the table; his wide mouth was tight.

The girl caught his hitch immediately, eyes sharpening as she lowered her arm to scratch her leg. “Although –? Although what, fat-smith? What are you hiding?”

Maissel exhaled roughly, muttering unwillingly under his breath. “There is… one thing I make,” he answered reluctantly.

“What? Tell me, chandler!”

A muscle twitched in his haw, but he answered, albeit in a low, gruff tone. “An oil, girl. Something exotic and strange, from the Empire. The scraps of the humans’ silk fabrics are ground into a fine powder and used with plant oils and fats. Women in the west use it to make their hair smoother than skin and as shining as the waves at sunset.”

The girl laughed lightly in the chandler’s face. “They grind up their clothes and put them in their hair?” she laughed. “What a strange notion, fat-smith. You are very inventive, but you did not have to lie just to entertain me.” She giggled again to herself.

Maissel’s brow drew down in a frown. “Lie?” he growled. “I have not lied, girl. That it is one of the strangenesses of humanity I will not deny, but it is fact. If you will not believe, I – I will show you.” His voice hitched at the end, as though he spoke more than he had intended.

“I do not believe,” replied the girl stoutly, eyes sparkling, “for how would you know of it, hmmm, chandler?”

“I know of it because a Hlaalu agent visited me a few years ago, wanting me to experiment with the composition,” he growled, jumping to his feet and glowering. “And don’t ask me why a Hlaalu was here; I don’t know any more than you of the strange minds of that House. I did as he asked, and he left, paying me a pittance. But I still have a sample of the product left here somewhere…” His hands were busily shoving things aside on the shelves by the wall, holding others up to the light. His forehead was creased, but his eyes were distant, filled with a confusion that was more internal than it was associated with locating his object.

“A likely story, fat-smith,” began Maela with a grin, “but –“

The clunk of a large glass bottle on the table cut her short. Blueish liquid sloshed viscously inside, sealed in with the dreugh wax Maissel so often used.

“This proves nothing,” she went on after a hitch, full lips curved in distaste. “You have a thousand bottles of oil in your home, chandler.”

His lava eyes narrowed. “Very well,” he grated, and unsheathed his belt knife. His hand quivered ever so slightly. “A demonstration is the only – the only thing, then.” His blade bit into the wax seal viciously, but his eyes were wild, staring down at his hands. A part of him was horrified by what he was doing, but the warmth and the contentment instilled in him by the Royal Jelly kept it a powerless onlooker.

“Huh?” Maela gasped. It came out as a squeak. “You don’t really mean to put that stuff in your hair, do you, Maissel?”

“Of course not,” he rumbled. “My hair does not need it; we settled people already treat our hair properly, though with a different oil. You, though – yours needs it.” He pried the glass stopper from the bottle’s neck.

“Mine?” she said, gasping again. Her hands flew to her head protectively. “Oh, NO!”

“Relax, Maela,” grated Maissel soothingly as he poured two large drops of the blue, gel like substance into the palm of each hand. “There’s no need to be scared.” So he said, but his own eyes stared down at his palms in helpless horror.

“Scared?” squeaked the girl. “Who said anything about scared? I might have been a little bit concerned, but that’s not the same thing.” She had to visibly pry her hands away from her head.

“Good,” grunted the chandler, moving to stand behind her chair, “then you are ready?” His hands were poised, and shaking.

“I… suppose so,” she answered, but his hands were in her hair before she finished, snatching out the bone pins that held up her bun. Her long black locks fell loose to her shoulders. Then his huge palms were pressing against her scalp, and cold oily liquid was squelching through her hair and along her skin. She shuddered, stiff backed and uncomfortable in her chair, but the chandler paid no attention. His rough fingers worked methodically through her hair, suddenly solid and sure, rubbing and threading and spreading the thick oil along every frazzled follicle. And bit by bit the tension eased from her, coaxed away by the fat-smith’s fingertips’ rhythmic massaging, and abruptly transformed into something quiet, warm, and languid. She closed her eyes, let her neck bend, her head fall back unresistingly into the chandler’s wide palms. His breath was a deep bellows by her ear; she could feel his stomach expand against her skull with each too-careful breath. His hands moved more slowly, more hesitantly as they gathered the hair that was so rarely let loose, pressed it close against her skull where the oil was thickest, rubbed lock on lock between grey thumbs.

He tipped her head forward gently without a word, and she let loose a long breath. Her eyes slid half open; the room was gold and amber, lanterns swaying above, flames flickering behind, the long, stout table glowing under her hands.

“Well, are you satisfied now?” rumbled the chandler at her back. His hands quavered, poised behind her head, but his voice showed none of the overwound tension in his flesh. By Almsivi, her hair, loose, free, unbound, curling against the smooth skin of her shoulders…

Maela’s glistening, full lips curved slowly. “Satisfied?” she murmured. “As to this human oil thing, you mean, fat-smith? Well, it isn’t the horrible thing I thought it would, but as to whether or not it does what you say, this adding of silk to the hair… how could I be satisfied when I have not yet felt it for myself?” Her words were long, slow, languorous.

The chandler grunted. “Then feel for yourself,” he snapped, and he watched, wide eyed and impotent as one of his hands reached over the girl’s bare shoulder, as it enveloped one of hers and pulled it up. His own fingers pressed a lock of silk-smooth black hair into hers, and he did nothing to stop them.

“Oh, my,” gasped the girl as the smooth, oily lock curled wetly about her finger. She craned her neck around to see it for herself, glistening blackly like dreugh ink on the tide. The line of her jaw creased against her twisted neck. “You really were not making stories, Maissel,” she said. He did not reply. Her blouse had creased on her back as she turned, and gapped down her spine.

“Maela,” he murmured. “What is this?”

His rough finger brushed the skin of her back, and the touch was a hot-cold shock down her spine, across her scalp, and suddenly she had to make herself breathe.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” she said, putting lightness in her voice despite the sudden fluttering in her stomach. “Just a rash.”

“How long have you had it?” grated Maissel behind her. He stared down at the fingertip that had touched her.

“A few days. But it is nothing, fat-smith.”

“Does it itch?”

She hesitated, and the chandler took her silence as confirmation. One rough hand on her shoulder pushed her gently forward, and the other brushed across the white, ashy patch of skin in the middle of her back. She bit her lip tightly.

“It is not nothing,” rumbled Maissel. “You have ash-rind, Maela.”

“Ash-rind?” she choked out.

“Yes,” grated the chandler. His hands moved over her bare shoulders, searching for more patches of rash. “It is not a disease, but a simple physical response our bodies have without water. The price we pay for being able to do without it for a time. It can become very debilitating, given time. You were very dehydrated when you came to me, Maela. You no longer are, but your skin is paying the price for its resilience.” He pulled up one of her arms, tugged back the sleeve at her wrist to examine the spot at which she had been scratching; the skin had broken, and scabs had begun to form.

“So… my body still thinks it is thirsty,” murmured the girl, staring straight ahead, unseeingly. “What can be done?”

“I am no healer,” answered the chandler, dropping her arm and moving away from her to one of the shabby wooden shelves along the walls. “I only know one cure. Fat. As it happens, though it will work for this case.” He pulled a large clay bottle from one of the shelves and set it on the table before the blank-faced girl. “This is simple scathecraw oil. Your skin needs protection and nourishment while it heals itself, or the ash-rind will cover – all of you.” He paused a moment, staring down at her. His heart pounded in his chest. “Rub that in,” he grated in a sudden rush, “all over, every day for a week, and you should heal. I will withdraw to my chambers. It is best you start immediately.” He strode hurriedly to the stairs, without waiting to hear her reply, without being able to help hearing her disappointed gasp of breath, his wide fists clenched at his sides, his jaw clenched as his mind whirred furiously, incomprehensibly, overstimulated and overpowered.

“Won’t you do it, Maissel?”

Her voice snagged him and his mind both into immovability. He froze with his foot on the first of the warped wooden stairs. His head turned slowly back. She sat there, stiff backed, nervous, watching him from the stout table, with her bare grey shoulders, her huge eyes, her full briasts. She stared at him, lava look to lava look, and there was a great overflowing in her eyes, of challenge, of fear, of want and will and loneliness. The determination of a warrior; the uncertainty of a girl; the curves of a womer; the fat of a babe.

And Maissel said what the core of his nature willed him to say.

“Very well.”

AN: Short one.

Chapter XII

The door was shut. For ten days, its cracked, age darkened boards did not budge. It stood there, blank and implacable in the stonemold wall of the chandler’s tower home, telling nothing to the grey skies or the dry winds or Chana’s aching, point-poised ears, issuing nothing to the frostbitten cobblestones or her voracious, red rimmed black eyes. She watched. Silent, cold, and stiff, the Hetman’s daughter watched that door day after night after day, wrapped up in her black cloak and perched with a hard stool on her parents’ roof as the sun and moons and winds whirled unheeded around her. She barely ate; she did not sleep, save when her body refused her own refusal. Flesh fell away from her; her cheekbones took on hard edges like stones; her ribs stood with black shadows in the glass when she undressed. Her parents began trading worried glances, began asking if she was well, but Chana reassured them with brittle smile and motions that looked like eating. She was happy, see? Happy and eating and dutiful like any good Hetman’s daughter should be. She was fine.

But Chana was not fine. She did not know what to do. Her plan had failed; the door was shut, and Maela was locked away behind it, locked away in the house of her own she had wanted for so long, locked away with the emptiness and possibilities she had longed to fill, locked away with the beautiful old table she had spent so many hours preparing with her touch, locked away with the chandler she loved. She had poured out all her dreams into the voids of the chandler’s home, burned their fumes from afar to keep herself going, but her reservoir was sealed, and she was empty. The door was shut; her life – was shut. She did not know what to do.

So she sat, and she watched, and she waited, faith and patience and hope replaced with numb fatalism. She though, she schemed, she planned, she purposed, but none of it seemed to help; none of it would work. The time for plots had passed. She wished she had never tried plotting, never tried to maneuver Maissel into coming to at her crooked finger. She wished – she wished that she could just go to him, knock on that grooved door and throw herself into his arms, abandon all pride and power and just confess, tell him that she loved him, wanted to marry him, that she longed to share his house and his table and his bed. Yet how could she, when that girl was there still, when he had pushed Chana away for her? She could throw off dignity before her mer, but she would never let Maela see her that way. It was impossible; the door was shut.

And then the Zainab came. Too early, still, for the yurts of the Ashlanders to appear on the heights, but appear they did one silent morning, silhouetted against the grey skies. There was hope, then; the girl’s people had come, she would leave, or they would collect her, and Chana would have Maissel all to herself! She brightened, split her attention between the chandler’s door and the rocky crest, poised to rush down as soon as she saw a delegation issue forth from one or the other, ready to make her confession to the chandler at the first opportunity.

But they did not appear. Not the first day, nor the second, nor the third. Slowly, her she began to put things together, began to synthesize what she had seen and heard and been told. And Chana swallowed a great horror.

The Ashlanders did not know that one of their own was living in the village. They would never have allowed it; that Chana knew. Maela had lied; it had to be her, Maissel could not have lied to her, he could not have. It had to have been Maela; she had fooled her mer. She was not an honored ambassador, a negotiator of trade; what ambassador would not return to visit her own people when they appeared? No, that girl was a liar, a runaway or an outcast hiding from her tribe and leeching off the village. The Zainab would not have sent her. She was in Vos on her own mission. And that realization was enough to move Chana to very precipitous measures indeed.


They threw her to the ground. Her cheek scraqed on rough kresh fiber; the heat of flames washed over her head. Chana moved to lift her head, and a boot was planted, hard, between her shoulder blades, shoving her face back down. She grunted, then growled fiercely past the gag drying her tongue and stretching her cheeks. She could not see past the dark cloth over her eyes; her elbows and wrists were bound in the small of her back, looped together with her ankles. Cold air pebbled the skin of her thighs where they were exposed; in her ignominious position, her skirts had slid up nearly to her waist.

“What is this?” grated a mer’s rough voice curiously from in front of her.

“A villager, Ashkhan,” came the reply from above, from the mer with his boot on her back. “We found her skulking around the outer yurts.”

“Tight bindings, for one of the settled people.” Footsteps approached.

The answer was embarrassed. “Yes, Ashkhan. She gave quite a struggle. Those legs are stronger than they look; she has a very mean kick. And bite.”

The footsteps halted by her side, and the boot was removed from her back. The first voice spoke. “A biter, hmmm? A villager with some fight in her, I see.” There was the creak of armor and leather creasing. “She looks strong enough to me, Kanly. These legs were made for running… or for being caught.” Something touched her, the lightest possible trace of a finger starting from the sensitive skin at the back of her knee and running all the way up her thigh, nearly to her bottom. She shuddered in her bonds, muscles suddenly quivering and tight, straining for release… yet not.

A quiet rattle of armor once more; the mer straightening up. “Well, what do you think we can get for her, Kanly?” he asked, striding away.

The mer who had captured her – Kanly – answered hesitantly. “I do not know, sera. These settled people are always grudging to pay, but she is young. Perhaps she has a husband who would be eager to see her freed. If not, well, she will serve well to warm our beds until her parents miss her.”

“Indeed she would,” grated back the Ashkhan. Chana’s breath seized up in her lungs. Something strange and tense was flooding through her thoughts, overriding coherent thought with its power. “I am almost tempted to hold her here a few nights for the purpose, before issuing the ransome – but, ah, business before pleasure. And anyway, my Wise Woman frowns on that sort of thing,” he added in a low mutter. “But untie her, Kanly, El-Sayal, and let her speak. If she has a husband among the settled people, we must know, as we must know her name. Go on.”

The two mer who had captured her knelt on either side of her prostrated body. She could feel their wrists on her back as their fingers began working at the knots. They loosened, and her feet shot out as she flailed, trying to land her heel in flesh, a gut or an eye or a crotch; anything. They pinned her quickly, but she got at least three good grunts out of them first, with elbow and skull and foot.

The Ashkhan chuckled. “You were not lying, you two,” he said, “she does have fight! Calm down, womer, or I will tie you back up again myself and take you to my yurt.”

Chana growled, and gave one last struggle, but then she lay still. The two mer holding her down hoisted her up, so that she knelt upright on her knees. They tugged the blindfold from her eyes. Her fiery gaze flared out on the scene, on the low fire under the dark khanumbra, on the stars in the inky sky beyond, on the Ashkhan before. He stood just across the fire, a wide shouldered figure clothed in leather and pale, spiky chitin armor, powerful hands braced on his belt, standing so close to the flames that his pointed chin cast the rest of his face in shadow.

“Mmph – release me, n’wahs!” she hissed, spitting the gag out into the flames before her captors had even finished untying it. The fabric flared on the coals, and she glared up at the Ashkhan. “I am not your flesh-toy, your plaything! I come here on a peaceful –“

“Spitting defiance from the first word,” broke in the Ashkhan amusedly. “Careful, Settled One; we Ashlanders find that attractive in a womer.” Something clenched inside her. “But please, calm yourself and answer our questions. What is your name?”

“I am Chana Aralas,” she growled up at him, “and I –“

“Good, good,” interrupted the Ashkhan again. “Now we are getting somewhere. Do you have a husband, Chana Aralas?”

“I do not have,” she replied, “but –“

The Ashkhan shook his shadowed head ruefully. “That is not so good, for you,” he lamented. “If you had a husband, we would not touch you no matter our boasts, unless he tarried so long with your ransom that it was clear he did not mind, but –“

“Would you listen?!” she shrieked, shaking her head like a whirlwind. The mer holding her arms had to take a tighter grip to keep her still. “I do not have a husband because one of your womer is down there in the mer’s house!”

She stared up at him, her scarlet hair in wild disarray around her thin face. The Ashkhan had gone completely still, staring back at her.

“What… did you say?” he grated out slowly.

“One of your womer has been living in the village for nearly a month,” answered Chana in a rush, panting. “That was why I came here, to tell you so you could remove her!”

He paused, as though collecting his nerve. His voice was tight when he spoke. “Do you know her name?”

“Maela,” Chana breathed. The pale armored figure swung abruptly around, its back to the flames. The Ashkhan’s hands were clenched tightly at his sides, his chest heaving with furious breath.

“What is this?” echoed a new voice from behind Chana. “Have you claimed a hostage, Shabael?” The speaker was a womer.

“Not a hostage,” grated the mer, sounding quite unlike he had a few minutes before; his voice was rough as granite, strained as an overwound lute string. He sounded as though he could snap at a touch. “An informant. It seems your daughter beat us here, Harah.”

“My daughter?” gasped the womer, “but this is not my daughter. What do you speak of, Ashkhan?”

He laughed, and the sound was horrific. Chana nearly shuddered with sympathy. “No, this is not your daughter. Your daughter is down in this one’s village, in the house of the mer this one wishes to marry, and if I know anything of your daughter she is in his bed as well.”

Harah squawked. “What? How can this be? Tell me what you know, girl!” Her hands shoved away Chana’s captors like swatting flies, but then without pause they seized Chana’s chin and twisted her face up to the Wise Woman’s seizing red eyes. “Tell me!”

“It’s true,” spat Chana. “She’s been in our village for nearly a month, living with our chandler, Maela, your daughter!”

“The chandler!” gasped the Wise Woman, and the exclamation echoed behind her in gritty voices and grittier tones. “No! My daughter – with your chandler?” Her voice peaked in flabbergast.

“Release her, Harah,” growled the Ashkhan, facing them once more. “And let her go. You have served me well, Chana Aralas,” he grated, “so go, now. Return to your people. Tomorrow the –wench – will be removed, but tonight we must prepare. She will not come easily.”

“You do not suggest a raid on the village, I hope,” said Harah, releasing Chana’s chin. “That would be disastrous. Better to –“

“To let you fetch her out, and work up a story between you?” countered the Ashkhan nastily. “No. We must –“

Chana did not stay to hear the rest. She had what she wanted. She had hope. As she scrambled to her feet, as she flew through the camp and down the path to Vos, it burned in her heart, fiercely, like the howling winds of night. It flamed on her skin as she ran, an exhilaration pounding in the raw chafes and bruises of her brief captivity. She was finally going to get what she truly wanted, and, this time, nothing could stop it.

AN: OK, so the last one was a bit of a cliff hanger, and I had this written, and free time to type it, so... thought I'd post it. This marks the end of Part Two.

Chapter XIII

"Chandler! Sera Sarethi! Maissel! Open up, quickly! We need you!" The door rattled on its ancient hinges. Maissel looked up, mildly perturbed, from his breakfast of saltrice porridge and stewed marshmerrow. It was not every day someone came banging on his door. Three loud knocks, as of fists, broke in quick succession on the wood, loud as cracking stone.

"Wake up, Chandler! This is urgent!"

"You had better answer," murmured Maela softly. She watched him with those soft eyes from her seat on the hearth. Her legs were tucked underneath her body, her silky smooth black hair pulled over one bare shoulder for her brush's lick. She wore her Ashlander garb, as always; the tan kresh linen skirt hung with bones, with rattles and racer plumes; the thin blouse that bared her smooth shoulders; the pale chitin boots.

“I suppose,” grated the chandler reluctantly, pulling his eyes away from her and pushing himself to his feet. He crossed to the door.

“Finally!” exclaimed Yakin excitedly as the chandler’s face appeared. “I thought you’d gone, or something. Maissel, you’ve got to get out here!” He spoke breathlessly, struggling to get the words out, and his red hair was in disarray all over his youthful face.

“Calm down, boy,” growled Maissel, opening the door a little wider. “What is it?”

“The Ashlanders are here!” squeaked the boy, his smooth cheeks flushing as he stared down at the chandler from his inch or so of an advantage. “And they want her!” His eyes – and finger – shot past Maissel toward a queasy looking Maela.

“So you must come now, both of you!” he went on, “or I don’t know what will happen! They’re all waiting, Sera! And they’ve got weapons!”

The chandler stared up at the boy, into him, past him, for a few seconds, his wide mouth set in a stubborn, surly line. Then he spoke, in a tone like grinding rock.

“Tell them we are coming.”

Yakin’s mouth fell open, and his eyes popped. “Tell them?! Are you crazy? You can’t wait; you’ve got to come now!”

“Do as I say, boy!” growled Maissel fiercely. “I will be along shortly. I need a moment to put my boots on. Go!” He shut the
door firmly on Yakin’s protests, turning away swiftly. His guar hide boots scuffed over the tiled floor.

His eyes met Maela’s across the room. She had not stirred from her seat by the fire. They stared for a long moment, trading saturated glances.

Maissel spoke. “The Zainab have come for you.”

“They have,” agreed Maela, voice quiet and calm. She looked away, to the spasming light of the fire.

“What will you do?” grated the chandler. There was a horrific, loose suspension in his muscles, like an arrow at the top of its arc.

“What I must do, Maissel,” she murmured. “Return to my people.”

Muscles rippled over the chandler’s jaw, in his temples. “Why?” his voice scraqed.

Maela’s gaze softened sadly, meeting his hard eyes gently as she got to her feet. “They are my people, Maissel. I cannot leave them forever. I must return.”

“They cast you out,” he hissed back, through gritted teeth. “They banished you for refusing a mer! You would go back to that? To him?”

“Maissel –“ she began, but the chandler interrupted immediately.

“Stay here,” he growled desperately. “Live here. With me.”

“And give up who I am?” snapped the girl, face contracting in anger. “Give up my way of life, my people, my ancestors, to live with you?! You demand too much, fat-smith! Why don’t you consider leaving? You come with me!!” She glared at him, and suddenly the Mask Perilous had shrouded her features, its eyes blazing like coals in the wind.

“I demand much?” replied the chandler in a quiet voice, his teeth grinding visibly. “I demand much?!” he shouted suddenly. “You ask me to leave my ancestral home, my home for many times the years you have lived!”

“The Mask laughed scornfully. “What is a home?” sneered Maela nastily. “Settled folk weakness! The Zainab do not need homes! Or is it that I am too young, you nasty old –“ But Maissel cut off the rest of her words.

His hands seized her face, seized the Mask, cupped its fine jaw, his fingers curved behind her skull, and pulled her to the tips of her toes and the Mask’s furiously pursed lips up to his own. And the Mask melted at his touch.

“Maela,” he breathed down to her when their lungs had nearly run dry. His rough fingers stroked her dimpled cheeks. “I took you in. They banished you.”

“I know, my eaving,” whispered Maela back, her voice breaking as her eyes began to glisten.

“Then stay with me,” he rumbled.

The girl bowed her head, pressed herself against Maissel’s chest. She spoke into his shirt.

“You took me in, gave me comfort, warmth, succor… love. You filled the longing, broken places inside of me. You are the only reason I was able to forgive them. But, Maissel, I have forgiven them, and I must return.”

The pause after her words seemed to stretch out forever. She looked up hesitantly, at his neck, at the bottom of his jaw. His face was turned away, staring. Then she was stumbling backwards from the rough push of his hands, and a low, unearthly moan was echoing through the room, like the roar of an injured beast. She stared, as the noise went on and on, pouring from the mer’s throat, his head thrown back, turned partly away from her, his hands clenched in his grey hair as his lungs strained and the tendons bulged in his neck.

And abruptly there was silence; silence as Maissel’s mouth snapped abruptly shut and his arms lowered to his sides, and all his self-control returned to straighten his spine and smooth his face and eyes with blankness. He turned to her, but his eyes did not touch her; they stared, bereft and empty, somewhere over her shoulder.

“Come on,” he grated. His voice was devastatingly normal, terrible, horrifying when it came from the owner of those eyes. “There is no time. They are waiting.”

“Maissel!” gasped Maela, but he had vanished into Vos’ cobblestoned streets, the door swinging, creaking behind him, open on the pale sunlight of midmorning. She ran, but she could not catch that narrow figure, so fast were his longer legs working; his loose, holy trousers whipped as he fled. Her heart thudded in her ears as she chased between the humble stonemold buildings, as the bitter wind sliced through her clothes, ran its empty, mocking hands over her flesh, as sobs snagged in her throat. She had to talk to him, make him understand, feel his arms, his hands, his flesh one last time if she could not make him join her. She had to reach him.

But she did not; the rawboned, raw hearted old mer reached the town’s plaza a good thirty seconds before she did, so fast did he stride. The town was assembled, milling and whispering and glaring at her together there on the ancient flagstones, wrapped up tight against the winter morning’s chill. The people were a faceless blur; she could see nothing but Maissel. She drew up short, fighting for calm; she would not cry, not in the open like this. Maissel stood on the edge of the crowd, talking quietly with the white-haired priest and his apprentice. The priest nodded to the chandler, then patted him on the arm gruffly as he spotted Maela over the mer’s shoulder. She stared, blank faced and numb as the mer approached, his austere grey robes swishing with his steps.

“Come,” he said with grave simplicity. She stared up at him silently, and he put an arm around her shoulders. She nearly shuddered at his touch; his was not the comfort she wanted. Oh, but her heart felt as though it had been torn in two. The wind whistled; the crowd murmured threateningly. “Your people have come for you at last, girl,” said the priest at her side as he led her toward the gates. His rough voice was kindly, if firm. “It’s time for you to go home.” Maela stared past him, to Maissel, to her mer, her grey haired, wiry old mer standing there in his loose clothes, watching them without expression. Would it end like this? Would he ask her to stay with him again? She did not know how she would answer, if he did. She did not know if she could answer. Would he go with her, if she asked again?

“Wait,” she said, stopping the priest. “I must thank my host before… before I go.” Her own voice, so seemingly calm and collected, horrified her.

“Of course,” murmured the priest. “But – you must be swift. Yours are not a patient people.”

They swung around to approach the chandler. He watched, narrow face blank but eyes burning like Red Mountain’s crater. Maela took a few steps more toward him when the priest stopped.

“I… wished to extend my thanks for the gift of your hospitality,” she said, staring at his chest, the solid flesh on which she had pillowed her head so often in the last few days. That comfort, that warmth was just a few hours passed, and just a few steps away; but all dead, all gone. The eyes of the crowd pressed in on her, seeming to squeeze her skull like a vise.

“Anyone would have done as much for a stranger in need,” answered Maissel coldly.

Maela gave a single shudder. The cold; that was it. Of course it was. “I am sorry,” she said softly, “that I cannot reciprocate with a gift of equal value. Unless – unless you could take the hospitality of the Zainab, in turn?” She could not breathe.

His nostrils flared. “My home is here,” he growled. “As yours, it seems, is in the yurts.”

Air drained slowly from her lungs, whispering over her numb lips.

“It is my sorrow.” She spoke in the barest whisper.

The chandler shrugged his narrow shoulders scornfully. “Sometimes a gift acts as a seed, begetting others,” he replied, and suddenly his face was twisted in pain, “and sometimes the fruit it bears is void. Return to your tribe, Maela,” he snarled, turning away. “They await.”

And indeed they did. They waited as the priest steered a numb Maela toward the town’s gates, as the crowd parted in a whispering, hissing wave before them. They waited just outside the town, a silent, motionless mass on the rocky path, bristling with pale chitin weapons and spiked armor. A hasty contingent of guards had been scraqed together to hold the gates should the Ashlanders attempt an attack; Vuroni Drenim, looking awkward and puny next to his mother with her hammers and gnashing teeth, spoiling for a fight in her leather apron; a few others, the Elvuls and Andranos, short bladed scythes in hand and glinting in the weak sunlight. She passed between them without truly seeing.

The priest stopped beneath the gate’s arch, and Maela went on, mechanically, blindly. The Ashkhan, in full armor, his face covered by his chitin helmet with its polished eyepieces, waited in front with her glaring mother, the gulakhans spreading out from them in a small, armed and armored semicircle.

Shabael Al-Kaushad turned. “Come,” he said deeply, the word muffled by his helm, and began striding away up the path without another word. His gulakhans circled up around Maela, Derch and Kanly attempting to hold her arms as though she were a prisoner until her mother glared them off. That glare was ten times more fearsome when turned on her daughter, but Maela did not feel it. She could not. Her people surrounded her, silent, unwilling to show their disapproval, their division, before the villagers, and in silence marched back to their yurts.

She looked back, just once, near the crest of the hill. There was Maissel, a tiny figure standing motionless on the flagstones as the rest of the villagers diffused slowly back to their homes. The distance was great, but Maela’s eyesight was keen, and she knew her mer, knew the way he stood, the way he spoke, knew his comfort and his touch and his heart, and knew that that figure, with its hands shoved into the pockets of its trousers – oh, those hands, those beloved hands that would haunt her dreams – its clothes whipping in the wind, its head hunkering low between its narrow shoulders as it stared up at her – that figure was her mer. That figure was hers. And – for a moment – Maela took one last bit of comfort from him, from that certainty. She faced forward, chin held a little higher, ready to face whatever her tribe would throw in her face this time.

And so she did not see the slight figure in blue that stole to the chandler’s side. She did not see it take his arm, or touch his cheek softly. And she did not see the chandler hesitate, and then wrap Chana in his arms like clinging to a rock at sea. She did not see his head fall helplessly to Chana’s shoulder as the triumphant womer finally flung her arms around his neck. She did not see her aching, betrayed mer betray in turn. Her eyes were on the future, on the trials that awaited her with her own people, the work it would take to make them accept her again. She did not see.

The Zainab were gone by the next morning, taking sulfurous water and their erring daughter, but none of the chandler’s other wares; it would be a long, uncomfortable season. For the second year in a row, they departed early in the season, this time making north, and for the second year in a row the scouts of the Ahemmusa, when they came, found no Zainab to raid. For the second year in a row Vos had escaped the annual clash of Ashlanders. It was almost unprecedented, at least in the most recent generation. It was almost… unsettling.

It could not last.

Part Three: Seht

Chapter XIV

The chandler scrubbed away his own skin. He was naked; naked in the night on the slanted stonemold floor with its slotted drain, a rough brown bar of salted soap clenched in one broad hand, scrubbing furiously at his skin. He was covered in limp, greyish suds; they clung to his arms and back and chest in a thin scum, coated his fine grey hair thinly, made it stand on end, and slid slowly down his legs and onto his flat feet. And he scrubbed; twisting, bending, stretching, almost writhing in his focused, obsessive efforts to scraqe that abrasive piece of fat and salt over every inch of his tough hide. He worked by moonlight, the light of Secunda tinted red as it poured through the stained glass window of Almalexia before him; the Goddess’ beneficent smile and outstretched arms lay projected palely pink on his hairless chest. His skin tingled and ached where he worked; the dead flesh flaked away under the soap’s caustic touch. He scrubbed, and the fat ran over his raw bones, between all the seams of his flesh, and carried with it all the ash and dead skin he had; away, away from Maissel. But it was not enough. It was never enough.

He laid the soap aside, his callused fingers tingling, and lifted the large, gilded stone basin from the shelf in the wall just below Almalexia’s cobbled glass. He lifted it carefully over his head, and cold water sluiced over his body, slicked his hair to his skull, ran down the ridge of vertebrae jutting from his back and sent a swirl of suds down the drain in the floor. He set it back on the shelf carefully; it was not Maissel’s basin, just as it was not Maissel’s soap – though he had made it – just as the tiny washroom with its stained glass window was not Maissel’s, and as the rough scrubbing was no ordinary cleansing. Maissel was not in his own home, that cold, silent night. It was no ordinary night, that, no night of quietude and profanity, but a night of holy vigil, of prayer and purification, a night to be spent in the chapel, cleansing himself in its sanctified cells. It was a night to beg Almsivi and all the other ancestors to help cleanse his greasy soul.

It was the night before his wedding.

It had been a good year, by all normal standards. The rain had fallen in great soft sheets, cool and plentiful all through the spring and summer, and even in the hottest weeks there had been nary an ash or blight storm out of Red Mountain. The harvest was excellent; the sand paddies overflowed with the bowing fruited heads of saltrice, ran wild with gigantic marshmerrow stalks. The hills were so thick with wickwheat that the harvesters had to bring their scythes in to the Drenims for sharpening after just half a day’s work. The monsoons wailed out of the Sheogorad to the north, and the Grazelands blazed emerald. Maissel had not seen the rocky hillsides so thick with green in decades; the spiky leaves of the hackle-lo stood nearly twelve feet high in the sheltered gullies; he could almost see the trunks of the elms swelling with growth. Silt striders whelped on the coasts; tiny young cliff racers soared from hilltop to hilltop in flocks of the thousands; locusts buzzed in the tree branches, their songs the pulse of the wilderness; orange kwama larvae hatched by the hundreds in the egg mine and promptly left, squirming voraciously across the landscape; Irisea Andrano’s guar laid fourteen eggs at once! And they all hatched! It was a year filled with fruit and produce, a year that belted out its joy with greenery, a year overflowing with indomitable vivacity.

It suited Chana very well. The girl had absolutely blossomed. Her cheeks softened, her eyes brightened, her steps seemed ready to break into swirling dance. There she goes again,muttered the people of Vos good naturedly as she walked by, looking like she swallowed a particularly large and rambunctious flutter-by!Off to see her fiancée again! And there she went, skipping through the sunlit streets and swishing her skirts, smiling in soft happiness of such a degree as to be almost obscene. There she went, a warm cuttle pie in her hands, ready to vanish into her mer’s belly as she vanished into his – her! – house. There she went, sneaking guilty and giddy in the moonlit streets. There she went, alighting on the chapel like sunshine, to stir Gunaz and Yakin both into downright tizzies with her gaiety and outrageously ridiculous plans for her wedding. There she went, brimming over with joy at her engagement, fermenting the town with cheer that was quite novel in its palpability.

Nothing could spoil Chana’s mood in those long, golden months before her wedding. So Maissel had cried when she proposed to him, a polite two weeks after that Ashlander chit’s departure; they had been tears of joy! He had said yes swiftly enough, after all. So he paid far more attention to his work than he did to her; he would support her well with his industry! So she laid worried and alone, Ashlanders and ropes and capture whirling heatedly through her mind as she tossed in her sweat soaked sheets when he left for the wilds on week long errands; a wife must bear her husband’s absences! So he would not put it in her when she shared his bed, no matter how seductive she made her ‘I’m not sure,’s, her ‘wait,’s and ‘not yet,’s; he respected her! What more could she ask than for a mer who respected her words above the desires of his flesh? What more could there be? No; she was joy personified and wholly unperturbed.

And Maissel? What of him? How did he take to his engagement? In truth, he hardly seemed to notice it. Oh, he let Chana visit him every day, attended the dinners with her family like a dutiful son, met her mother – a womer younger than he by at least fifty years – pvssyd with her father about the village and the Temple and his daughter. He made gifts of scented soaps to Chana’s sister, sat through all the long, formal ceremonies of engagement and all the longer discussions of wedding arrangements, took in the inevitable night gowned Chana who crept up his stairs after, let his body rule his mind atop her, and took back his control at her first scared whimper, as blindly oblivious and incapable of truly understanding the girl as ever he had been. But for all of that, he still did not truly think of her, or of any of the other villagers. The chandler was the chandler, as he had always been; he went through his routine; he worked the fat as he always had.

Or almost as he always had. There was a change in him, in his behavior, a change no one but he could notice. The chandler no longer liked fat. He worked it, he smithed it, but he did not enjoy his work; it all seemed so – empty, so void of purpose, so mechanical. And more – it seemed dirty. He could not look at grease without shuddering, could not stand the feel of it on his hands day after day; its slick slime horrified him. He took to washing his hands ten times a day, and scrubbing his entire body at least once. Chana offered to help him, once or twice, with an odd gleam in her eye – her exact words had been ‘wash you up and get you clean’ – but he declined; he did not think she would have the ferocity to scrub him the way he wanted – needed – to be scrubbed. He did not have that ferocity, though he tried, scraping the soap over his skin with habitual roughness so that he was perpetually tender. To no avail; no matter how hard he scrubbed, it always felt as though there was some remaining particle of oil on him, locked away inside where nothing could get at it. But he tried to expunge it; oh, did he try.

So it was that when the end of the year approached and with it the end of Chana and Maissel’s year-long engagement, the pre-marital purification rite was but one more in a long line of dedicated attempts at cleanliness. And though this time had holy soap, soap made with the ash of his ancestors, it felt about as ineffective as every other attempt had done; his body was rubbed raw, but the ancestors had spared his soul; his heart still swam in oil.

He leaned one hand against the wall above his head, sighing heavily through his nose. Chana was just a few yards away through the walls, cloistered in the chapel’s other ritual washroom for her own purification. Soon, Yakin would come tapping at the door, and the two of them would don the plain grey robes awaiting them and begin their vigil in truth. A long night of kneeling and prayer in a chapel lit only by moonlight through the thick, stained glass dome above – a long time yet for Almsivi to answer his prayers. He let his forehead fall softly against the cool stonemold wall. Cold water dripped from his hair onto the small of his back. The prayers designated for the vigil were all of duty, purity, and harmony, but no one would know if he added a few iterations of the Enumerations of Incarnates. Almsivi knew he did not need a Book of Hours for that one, after this last year. It was one of the simplest of prayers, anyway, a bald invocation of the spheres of the Three in his life; Vehk’s mystery, the impetus of motion, to draw his stagnated inner life forward; Ayem’s love, so that he might marry poor Chana in truth instead of farce; Seht’s knowledge, to help him understand why the other two were necessary. In truth, it was the last blessing that would have most eased his mind and his heart.

There was a tap on the door behind him. Yakin had come to tell him it was time for their vigil. Twice more it came, hard and fast. The boy was certainly in a rush.

“Coming,” grated the chandler, “I will be dressed in a few moments.” He reached for the robes folded on the shelf in front of him, just below Almalexia’s rosy image. The latch of the door lifted with a click at his back, and the naked chandler turned in consternation.

“Boy, you could at least –“

The butt of the spear slammed into his gut.

He doubled over, clutching his stomach, his body convulsing with wracking dry heaves from the shock. The second blow cracked across his back, and he cried out as he fell. His face thudded to the soapy stonemold floor, and he blinked dazedly. Hair lay strewn across his vision, but he could see the boots in the doorway. They were wrapped in black cloth, to muffle their steps. Stealth. Who -?

There were voices above him, gritty male voices in hushed tones, but he could not make out what they said past the sound of his own rough coughing. Then they were tugging his arms behind his back and running thick, scratchy cords around his limbs. He struggled, but they held him in place easily with a knee in the small of his back; the hard edges of chitin armor indented his bare skin sharply. He tried to shout, but no sooner had he thought of it than his mouth was stuffed with fabric and a dark hood was forced over his head. His captors worked with remarkable efficiency; it seemed like mere seconds until he was trussed, wrists to his ankles in the small of his back, and thrown belly down across the spiky pauldrons of the shoulder of one of his captors. He groaned through his gag as short chitin spines scraqed his skin; he could not struggle without gouging himself something fierce.

They were moving, striding stealthily out under the chapel’s dome; that was the only place they could be going. Yakin! Yakin would see, would hide and alert the rest of the village! He had to!

But Maissel’s hope was short lived. “What of the priestling?” grunted the mer – the Ashlander, Maissel realized numbly; it had to be an Ashlander, with that chitin armor – who carried him.

“Leave him,” grated a second voice, a raspy whisper.

“And the girl?”

“She will learn we were here soon enough. Leave her be. We did not come to capture blanket warmers, you virile hunk of meat. And I certainly don’t want to carry her all the way back to camp if the Ashkhan is just going to release her.”

A door creaked quietly; freezing air howled over Maissel’s naked skin. They were in the streets; surely someone would see, someone would hear! But they spoke no more, and their cloth wrapped boots were inaudible on the flagstones under the gleeful whistle of the winter winds. And so they went, unnoticed, unmolested, across the plaza and out of the silent town, and left Chana oblivious. They left her warm and cheerful in her washroom nook, dreaming of the next day’s doomed ceremony and the consummation that would not follow.

They travelled for a long time through that bitter, blustery night, jogging along against the wind, the chandler dangling naked and ignominious over the shoulder of one mer or the other, his genitalia shrunken pathetically, his muscles spasming to warm his flesh, he too afraid to struggle except when they paused to shift the burden; those spines could pierce his gut with ease. Too long a time for their destination to be the heights above Vos; the Zainab had not yet arrived that year, anyway. It must be the Ahemmusa, he realized numbly. Why would an Ahemmusa come to Vos to capture him, though? They had definitely spoken as though they had come with a definite target. How would an Ahemmusa Ashlander even know who he was, though? But if it was not the Ahemmusa – the Zainab? Why would they kidnap him? Their tribe had every reason, as they would see it, to detest the sight of him; he had resigned himself to having lost that trade for good. They had no reason to come to capture him, after all this time. But who, then?

He quit wondering before long. He quit thinking about much of anything, before long. It was a midwinter’s night; he had very little attention for anything except the cold that slipped oh so easily, oh so beguilingly, into his thin limbs. He would not last long, naked in this weather. How long would their journey last? There was no sign; the hood over his eyes cut out all geography, all of the night sky, and his captors were silent save for their steady breathing. The only clock he had was the seep of winter along his bones and the [censored] of pain in his stomach as each footfall jarred him against the armor of his captor.

And then those steps slowed to a walk, and a low murmur of voices hit Maissel’s ears. There was a good deal of harsh, nasty laughter in the sound; somehow, Maissel could not quite sympathize with the emotion behind it, though he knew he must look ridiculous. He lifted his head weakly, straining his neck, and a dim orange glow outlined the thick fibers of the hood over his eyes. Warm air passed over him suddenly as his captor strode between two spots of light on the ground, and the chandler let his head hang down once more.

His captors halted. The air was warm on all sides.

“So you have him,” growled a deep voice before them.

“We do, sera,” answered the two captors in solemn tandem.

The first voice grunted sourly. “Well, set him down then. Let us begin this execution.”

A third voice spoke as they dropped him to the ground, tossed him carelessly across the stiff stubbled wickwheat stalks, and that third voice chilled him more than either the night or the first voice’s pronouncement. He knew the voice.

“You grow hasty, Ashkhan,” said Harah, Wise Woman of the Zainab. “This is a trial; the judgment is not foregone. Even for one of the false Velothi, trial must be held before punishment.”

“As you say, Harah,” grated back the Ashkhan sourly. “I spoke more in assumption of outcome than intent to omit trial. Derch, El-Sayal, cut his bonds, just so that he may sit and preserve what little dignity he has remaining. Not that I think he ever had much,” he added in a mutter.

A blade rasped from its sheath, sawed through the cord holding his wrists and ankles together, and rough hands jostled him into position, on his knees in the cold, rocky dirt and detritus, naked but warming in drafts of warm air from all sides. Orange spots of light glowed on all sides; he was encircled by small fires.

“He truly is a pathetic little thing, isn’t he,” said the Ashkhan idly, not bothering to keep his voice down. The sound moved slowly around the chandler at some distance. Maissel could feel the mer’s sneering eyes. “No marks of his faith. No muscle. Not even any scars. Nothing but wrinkles – especially between his legs. Look at that excuse for a spear! I’m surprised it still functions!” He laughed, and the sound rose up all around the naked, humiliated chandler, from the watching tribe, cold and cruel. “I truly don’t know what she saw in him,” he went on, under his breath. “A wizened old fat-smith, when she could have had any young warrior she wanted.”

“Shabael!” cracked Harah’s voice sharply. “Enough of your taunting. Begin the trial!”

“We might as well, I suppose,” growled the Ashkhan quietly. “The sooner the better, eh fat-smith?” He chuckled nastily, and Maissel rumbled behind his gag. The footsteps quickened suddenly, gravel crunching under the Ashkhan. The spots of light directly in front of Maissel flickered as the mer passed between. And then Shabael Al-Kaushad unleashed his tongue.

“My people!” he called out suddenly. “Blood of the Zainab, true hearted followers of Veloth, attend your Ashkhan!” A low, unintelligible rumble of response broke over Maissel from all sides. “Tonight is a night of trial! The accused kneels before you, illumined on all sides for your examination. Know his name: Maissel Sarethi, fat-smith of the settled people.” The voice moved slowly, left and right, back and forth; the Ashkhan was pacing. “You know the accusation! [censored]! [censored] of a daughter of the Zainab, [censored] of the daughter of our Wise Woman! And more, intrinsically; this worshipper of demons and betrayers dared to know one of the true Velothi, dared to mix his blood with ours!” The silence at his words was more disturbing than any heckle. In the pauses between the Ashkhan’s words, only the pops and cracks of flames broke the cold night air. “For this have we brought him here, to pay for his crimes according to the laws of the ancestors. We try him beneath the night, for he is not of our blood and does not merit the shade of the khanumbra. But we try him fairly despite his blasphemy, before the ancestors, greater and lesser, for he is still of the blood of the Chimer of old. For our common ancestors, he deserves that much.” Footsteps approached, and darkness blotted out the lights before the chandler. “May this trial be blessed by those ancestors; Azura’s wisdom fill our hearts, Mephalain thought-strings guide our words, and may our verdict strike with the purpose of Boethia!” he shouted, deafening and rough. The words echoed through the tribe, murmured and belted, whispered and sung. The chandler shivered. His naked skin prickled as one piece.

Gravel crunched before him. Stubble cracked. Cruel hands seized his jaw, jerked his head sharply upward. The dark inside of the hood was hot and damp with his panting breaths.

“Look upon us now, fat-smith,” growled the Ashkhan softly, for Maissel’s ears alone. “Look on me.” His other hand ripped the hood away from the captive’s head, tearing free some of his hair with it. And Maissel looked up into the face of a demon.

Horns. Spiky, bleached white outcroppings from dark grey-black flesh striated with green-black tattoos. Eyes like Red Mountain erupting; a thin hooked nose, sharply shadowed in the harsh light. This was a demon, a Daedra, a dremora. He was in the hands of the House of Troubles.

Or so he thought at wild first glance. Then the Ashkhan released his bruising grip on the chandler’s chin and the terrible face shrank back a few steps, and Maissel revised his opinion; the Ashkhan was definitely not a dremora. He was as Dunmer as Maissel. He was a young mer, from the chandler’s perspective; perhaps only five to seven decades old. His was a narrow face, on the whole, though his strong jawline and wide mouth mitigated the effect. His nose was thin, and hooked; his eyes sharp and narrow in the hollows beneath his heavy brows. The flesh, pulled tight as a corpse’s over his skull, was jagged with greenish glass-dust tattoos.

But it was the bones that were most striking. The mer’s face was pierced, all over, with polished bits of bone; in the center of his underlip, through each eyebrow, in both nostrils, at each temple. He bristled with bone, bone carved to sharp spikes and bone polished to smooth nubbins, bone graven and bone smooth; his long, pointed ears looked as though they had vertebrae along their upper edges. This – this was what had made the chandler think he dealt with a Daedra, for in the harsh light and dark of flame, those long, spiked ears truly did look like horns, as did the sharp spurs jutting from the Ashkhan’s temples; the finger bones through his eyebrows looked exactly like the brow ridges of the dremora as depicted in Temple lore.

That wide mouth gaped blackly as the Ashkhan laughed down at him.

“You stare so, fat-smith!” he chuckled. “It is almost as though you have never seen a mer of such courageous faith.” Maissel could only stare up at that mesmerizing face, bewildered. Courageous faith? He had met many mer of great faith in his life, but what did that have to do with the mer’s piercings? Unless… But the Ashkhan was speaking again.

“But enough,” he grated, face going grave as he folded ropy arms over his bare, muscular young chest. “Let us make haste with this trial. I am Shabael Al-Kaushad, fat-smith, grandson of Kaushad the Fruitful son of Uroshnor Daring-Drum. They were renowned Ashkhans in their time, my grandfather and great-grandfather. I will not claim grandeur, but I, too serve as Ashkhan for the Zainab Velothi. I am called Ancestor-Anointed, for the many times I have made the journey to our fathers and forefathers, to visit them in their cold beds and gain their favor.” He uncrossed his arms and grinned, tight lipped, down at Maissel. “This is what it means to be a mer of faith, fat-smith; I carry my ancestors with me. Always.” And one broad hand touched the lobe of a pierced ear. “In my ears I bear the niggling ossicle-nags of eleven Wise Women; thus am I always reminded the purpose of the organ.” The hand moved to the spiky bones jutting from the sides of his forehead. “My temples are pierced by the hyoids of Uroshnor and Tlaloc, that their advice may never leave my mind. The fingertips of Arisma, weaver of tales, grace my brow; the eyeteeth of Athyn Al-Seramat, my nose.” His callused fingers tapped eyebrows and nostrils in turn, then moved to his underlip. “The wrist-node of Ghanet hinges my lips, to remind me of silence when silence is best.” He paused, and Maissel stared up at him, unconscious of his nudity, of the ropes cutting into his wrists and ankles and the gag splitting the corners of his mouth. He was caught, in horrified fixation.

Then the wide lips parted, and the Ashkhan’s rough fingers tugged his glistening maroon tongue over the wrist-node of Ghanet, and farther, to his chin and past, impossibly long and narrow and muscular. A single nubbin of bone shone wetly in the center of the twitching muscle mass. It oscillated up and down in the wet flesh as the over long tongue twitched and flexed in the Ashkhan’s fingers like a trapped snake.

The fingers let go after long seconds of silence. The tongue retracted, and the Ashkhan spoke, grating like a glacier.

“And through my tongue,” he intoned, “I wield the baculum of Kaushad, that my grandfather’s fertility might propagate my words and their power for the good of the Zainab.”

The chandler swayed slightly, his eyes gone so wide for so long they felt dry in their sockets. Too much. It was too much. Too much blasphemy and perversity for one mer to face in such a short time. Shabael watched him in grimly satisfied silence. Then he turned on his heel and strode away between the two fires directly in front of Maissel, and took his place at the center of a long line of stone faced, armored Ashlander mer. Harah stood next to him, arms crossed impatiently.

“Well, Wise Woman?” said Shabael as he took his position beside her. “Begin the trial already.”

Harah pursed her lips sourly. Her arms tightened across the voluminous scarf she word draqed across her shoulders and chest.

“As you say, Ashkhan,” she replied in a deceptively mild tone. “For the Zainab people have been assembled and waiting for some time.”

And indeed they were, Maissel noted as he finally collected himself enough to take stock of his surroundings. He knelt on bare, cleared ground at the center of a tight ring of small bonfires; the lights he had seen through his hood, and outside that ring the Zainab were arrayed, a solid wall of dark Dunmer flesh, in bulky kresh linen skirts and trousers adorned with racer plumes or bits of shalk shell, in blouses and enormous grey scarves across the shoulders of the womer, tightly laced hide vests for the mer. Some wore pale chitin armor; some carried spears or notched blades. Behind them were the indistinct mounds of their yurts. Above those, the star spangled sky was obscured by the crests of hilltops; they were in one of the innumerable valleys of the Grazelands. No way to tell where, but certainly not on the heights above Vos.

“You have heard the charges leveled against you,” snapped Harah’s voice, snagging his frantic mind away from exploration and to her auger eyes. “[censored], and the mingling of blasphemer blood with that of the Zainab. As Wise Woman, I shall now present the evidence behind those accusations. It is limited, but irrefutable. Last year, my daughter was banished from our people following certain transgressions. She was to avoid all contact with our people and any others until her banishment was done, set to last unto the start of this year. However, shortly before this term had expired, it was brought to the attention of the Ashkhan and myself that she was not serving her punishment as was proper. Instead, she was living with you, Maissel Sarethi.” She leveled him with a hard look – hard, but there was surprisingly little resentment or true disappointment in it. “This was confirmed the following day when my daughter emerged from the place of the settled folk and returned to us. Who will witness to this?”

“I will!” barked the Ashkhan immediately, and his gulakhans echoed him. The tribe followed; ‘I will,’s grinding from all sides. They had all been there.

“Then the evidence stands,” intoned Harah. “This, alone, is not enough, however, upon which to base the condemnation of a mer. But we are not done. Bring forth the primary exhibit.” Flames crackled in the wake of her words, and two of the Ashkhan’s gulakhans vanished from their places in line, into the darkness of the camp. The rest waited in silence. In his bound, illumined nudity, Maissel was the cynosure of all eyes. The Ashkhan watched him, chin raised arrogantly, pierced demon face shadowed and confident. The Wise Woman looked on more guardedly, her face blank and red eyes shuttered. It was those eyes the chandler chose to meet as he waited, the eyes of the womer with whom he had trade for nearly a century and known no more fully than that, the mother of the girl he had – He stared, met her calm gaze with his own as he wondered furiously what physical evidence they could have against him. Not that it would matter – they would sentence him regardless, and regardless of what he said, if they let him speak in his own defense. And the chances were that they would sentence him to death; so would he have done, for the crime of [censored]. No [censored] had been committed, of course, but that, too, was immaterial. They would kill him or they would not; he could do nothing. The only thing he could do was to face it with resolution and dignity, and that he would do. They had shaken him at first, but that was past; he knew what faced him. He gritted his teeth through the cloth of the gag, flexed the muscles in his jaw.

The two gulakhans returned out of the darkness, shoulder to shoulder, and at first Maissel though they returned in failure; their arms and hands were empty. Where was the evidence? Then they parted, and all of the chandler’s so recently collected calm and dignity vanished along with every coherent thought in his head.

Maela was the evidence.

Or rather, her swollen stomach.

Chapter XV

“Stand there, girl,” snapped Harah, pointing to a spot directly in front of the Ashkhan… and Maissel. “In the light. Let the people see your belly.” Maela obeyed silently, her eyes on the ground. She stood there in front of him, her plump cheeks glowing in the firelight. By the ancestors, Maela, her glistening lips, her soft nose, her straight back. Maela. He could not breathe, could not blink. She wore a thick scarf over her shoulders for warmth like the other womer, and just like those she had wriggled out of to… Her fingers gathered the hem of her blouse, lifted it up, and there was her belly, the most delicate of blue-greys, smooth and jutting and round, her navel protruding. Her womb; his child, his child, HIS CHILD! Stars seemed to whirl around his head; why would she not look at him?! Maela!

“So you see,” said Harah loudly. “My daughter. Fat with twelfth moon child. This babe was conceived approximately that long past, when the Zainab came to retrieve my daughter.” She paused. Maela stared at the ground silently, compliantly. What was wrong with her? She never took anything without a fight! Why should she succumb now? Unless… unless she was getting exactly what she wanted. Unless she wanted him dead.

“The implication is clear!” yelled Harah. “My daughter lay with the mer before us, by choice or by force, when she stayed in his home, and thus was this child conceived. But we must be certain. If any mer here among the Zainab knew my daughter at that time, let him speak now!”

Palpable silence spread in the wake of her words. The Zainab looked on, grim faced and tight lipped from Ashkhan to infant, and the barren winds whistled over the camp, pimpling Maela’s bare, swollen bely, flaring the encircling fires, numbing the chandler’s skin.

Harah nodded once, firmly, staring around at her assembled tribe. “The denial is accepted; none of the Zainab lay with my daughter at that time. Let the words of any who claim otherwise be swallowed by the wind.”

“But neither is this enough,” she went on, “for we must be certain in our conviction. If any mer mere among the Zainab has lain with my daughter at any time, before, after, or during her banishment, let him speak now and make known the time and place!”

If possible, the answering silence was even more complete. Certainly it was more grim; the Ashkhan’s thin nose was ridged and livid with white in a silent snarl. His flesh bunched around its piercings of bone as he glared at Maissel. Maissel barely noticed him. Maela. His child. Maela. Why would she not meet his eyes?

“The denial is accepted,” repeated Harah when the silence had stretched for one long minute. “The opportunity of speech is forfeited; none of the Zainab have lain with my daughter. Let the words of any who claim otherwise be swallowed by the wind. Now. One final presentation of proof. Maela, look upon the mer illumined before us. Have you known him?”

The girl’s eyes rose slowly from the ground. She looked at him, and his naked body flooded with warmth like the comfort of Royal Jelly despite the wind; she saw him, she looked at him, and he could not miss the flash that had flared inside her at the doing!

“I have,” she said firmly, and violet stained her smooth cheeks.

“Is this mer the father of your child?”

Something fierce and proud swelled in her magma eyes as they fastened on his. She stood straighter, taller; her scarf shrouded chest rose slightly. And beneath the cold, shock-blinking stars, the hem of her blouse gathered in those tiny, awkward childish hands, her babe laden belly bared to the winds, Maela answered. She fulfilled him utterly, and she condemned him.

“He is,” she said.

“Then the evidence is absolute,” said the Wise Woman. Maissel could barely hear her over the sound of the blood pounding in his ears. He barely cared to hear. “This mer, Maissel Sarethi, sired a child upon Maela, my daughter. The evidence has been presented. You may stand aside, Maela.”

She held Maissel’s gaze for a long moment before she obeyed. As she strode away, eyes on the ground and blouse over her belly once more, to stand off to the side of the line of gulakhans, her lips twitched, curled minisculely, and with them the chandler’s heart. In agony or hope, he knew not which; sharp are the twinges of both.

The Ashkhan stepped forward, the bone in his underlip twitching as he smiled tightly down at the chandler. He rubbed broad palms together in anticipation.

“Having seen the evidence,” he grated, “in all its irrefutability, I pronounce this mer condemned of the named charges. Now to –“

“I dissent, Ashkhan,” broke in Harah smoothly. “It is too soon to pronounce condemnation for all charges.”

Shabael jerked backwards as he turned to face her, shocked and affronted. “What do you mean?” he asked, clearly bewildered and off balance. “She named him herself! There is no room for mistake! You said so yourself!”

“While it is indeed certain that the chandler is guilty of the second most crime – mingling his settled blood with that of the true Velothi – the evidence does not necessarily prove that the fat-smith is guilty of the charge of [censored].” She went on blandly, meeting the Ashkhan’s stare with coolness. “As you will no doubt remember, Shabael Al-Kaushad, [censored] is only such if one of the parties involved is unwilling in the act; a womer may be accosted and ravished by a strange mer, but if in her heart she desires the act, she is a party to its execution and it cannot be [censored]. This is, of course, one of the principal precepts of the Mephalain Antiphaluses, as you know.”

Shabael scowled; it would have looked surly on anyone not adorned with bits of his ancestors’ skeletons. “I know,” he muttered.

“Of course you do,” replied Harah primly. “Just as you know the question you must now ask.”

He growled low in his throat; his long, muscular neck bobbed quaveringly as he turned to scowl at Maela.

“Girl,” he barked, “your testimony is needed once more. Did you lay with this pathetic excuse for a mer of your own volition?” The spiky hyoids were twitching visibly with the pulse in his temples.

“I did,” answered Maela stoutly. Her plump chin rose. “He took me in, -“

“That will be sufficient,” hissed the Ashkhan, slashing his hand through the air as he swung to glare down at Maissel. “You have told us what we need to know, despite how sharply the shame of having willingly let a blasphemer and betrayer’s seed into your body. This admission – which surely must fill you with disgust and self-repulsion – more than any unwilling violation could have done – indubitably clears this mer of the charge of [censored]. However, it –“

There was a rumble from behind him. “But, Ashkhan, her volition does not eliminate the charge!” spoke up one of the gulakhans; a beefy fellow, with a thick neck, a jaw like a block of stone and a face contorted in squinty-eyed, pugnacious confusion. “She is too young to make such decisions! Any mer who touched her would have committed [censored]!”

The Ashkhan’s back stiffened slowly; the Wise Woman turned a disgusted look on the gulakhan; Maela donned the Mask Perilous of old swift as thought and pinned the muscle bound mer’s spleen to the ground with its ferocity. He gulped.

“Too young to choose her own lovers, is she?” whispered Harah dangerously. “She was old enough to be cast out into the wilderness! The Zainab conferred on my daughter their good opinion of her sentience and will when they banished her. It cannot be retracted.”

“Indeed it cannot,” echoed the Ashkhan, sounding ever so slightly sour at agreeing with his insubordinate Wise Woman. His real ire was for his outspoken gulakhan, though; the mer had implied that Shabael, too, could have been tried for [censored], had his courtship of the girl been successful all those months ago. “Think before you speak, Derch. We all know that Maela does nothing she does not wish to do.”

“If sera gulakhan does not know,” snapped Maela on the heels of the Ashkhan’s words, “I invite him to come to my tent later tonight and attempt to press his suit. We will see whether I am incapable of refusal – and whether a mer’s scrotum can be used to tie up his trousers.”

Derch’s eyes bulged, and he shuddered with horror and embarrassment under those three harsh gazes. He shook his head with mute vehemence, and the Ashkhan turned toward Maissel once more.

“As I was saying,” he grated, “the charge of [censored] may be waived, but the second charge cannot be.” His finger stabbed toward Maela. “That girl is fat with your child, fat-smith, when it should be m – when it should have been Zainab flesh that pierced her maidenhead and filled her womb! So I convict you, Maissel Sarethi! I convict you of having tainted the blood of the true hearted Velothi! Can I get a witness!?” He roared the last words.

“Aye!” the gulakhans yelled as one, and “Aye!” murmured Harah a moment later, mouth tight.

“Then we turn – at last! – to the matter of punishment,” breathed Shabael, grinning terribly down at the bound and gagged chandler. The wind rushed suddenly, biting at his bare skin, drying the blood dripping down his cheeks from the splits at the corners of his mouth.

“It was an act of blasphemy, this mer’s crime,” said Shabael loudly, keeping his burning eyes fixed on Maissel. “A blasphemy against our ancestors! This fat smith is a worshipper of the Traitor’s Triumvirate! He gives honor to the false gods, the fleshly pretenders who betrayed Nerevar and empowered themselves with Dwemer abomination-craft at Red Mountain, who gave life to the Devil, to Dagoth Ur! He worships criminals above our spirit guardians, above Veloth’s Inspirators! There can be no doubt that this is truth, for he was taken from the settled people’s temple itself, interrupted in the midst of some heretical ritual! He has blasphemed against his – and our – ancestors, unto irredeemability.”

He paused, and his serpentine tongue slithered out over his wide lips. “And he has mixed that blasphemer’s blood with ours. He has engaged in the Pillow Mysteries of Boethiah with one of our daughters! He took a holy act – and he desecrated it. He must be punished. He must be put to death.”
An uneasy murmur ran around the encircled Zainab, but their faces were still grim and determined. The Ashkhan swept his eyes over them as he went on.

“It seems – harsh, no doubt,” he grated. “A response too strong for the crime. After all, any mer may be led astray when there are none to show him the way. Even the true Velothi can be led into error, as Maela was when she allowed this blasphemer into her body. We did not sentence her to death for her sins, and we did not demand recompense from the mer before us when Maela served hers. The blasphemy they committed was – is! – repugnant, noisome in the nostrils of the ancestors, but it alone does not merit death.” He grinned ever so slightly as his people went silent, as Harah and the gulakhans frowned in confusion. “Thus did we allow the fat-smith to escape justice, initially, months past when Maela’s trial was held. We let him go free, in our mercy. But we must remember – we did not know then what we know now. We did not know that the Wise Woman’s daughter had conceived.”

“It is the child we must think of!” he went on, raising his gritty voice. “The babe must be raised with the utmost care. He or she will be one of the Zainab, but will also possess the weaknesses of this blasphemer’s blood. We must take all precautions possible to ensure that the babe overcomes those weaknesses.”

“So understand, my people, that it is only partially in punishment that I sentence this mer to death. Far more important than the punishment is the protection it will provide. This fat-smith cannot be allowed to have any influence on his child’s life, if we hope to raise the child successfully to the ways of Veloth. Ah, but you say that we can easily prevent him from ever seeing the babe? You are correct; we could easily do this. But look at him, my people. He is old. He is weak. He nears his second century. Soon, he will die, and if he does, who can say but that his spirit might be determined enough to reach forward from the world beyond of its own will? He could touch the child, corrupt its innocent soul, act from the grave to ruin his babe’s life. No. We cannot allow this mer to have any influence on the child’s life, as flesh or spirit. And the only way that can be ensured is if we slay him here, now, and imprison his spirit for all eternity.” And from a pouch at his belt, Ashkhan Shabael Al-Kaushad drew forth a jagged stone, faceted like obsidian but deep mauve in color. A soul gem.

“We will slay him,” said the Ashkhan in the shocked silence, “and let the ancestors trap his spirit and bind it to this stone. Final judgement will be up to the spirit world; if they choose not to imprison him, death shall be the extent of the sentence.”

Maissel clenched his teeth achingly tight around his gag as he met the Ashkhan’s satisfied, contemptuous gaze. So the foiled lover wanted to punish his rival even beyond death, did he? He would seal his soul away for an eternity of agony and imprisonment? His blood chilled at the prospect, but he would not let this little mer and his eloquent tongue cow him. Maela had rejected her own Ashkhan, chosen him instead; it was Maissel’s child growing in her womb, not Shabael’s. That was the only thing he needed to stiffen his spine. The truth of it burned, stubborn and proud, in his heart. But would she not even attempt to speak for him? Would she not even try to defend him, as he had done for her? He could not see her as he stared up at the Ashkhan, not even peripherally. She said nothing. They all said nothing, second after interminable second.

Until Harah’s voice issued forth once again, quiet and composed. “The sentence is suitable,” she said, and a thrill of fear ran up Maissel’s spine. “As long as the ancestors are given final judgement. But, Ashkhan Shabael, it is your Wise Woman’s duty to point out to you that our judgement must first be without dissent before he can be slain and subjected to spiritual trial. There may yet be attributes to this mer that could change our judgement. The question has not been asked.”

The Ashkhan drew a long, stymied breath, and had to visibly stop its exhalation from becoming a growl.

“My Wise Woman is right to remind me,” he grated, folding his arms. “I grew hasty in my abhorrence for the crime. Are there any here who would speak to extenuate this mer’s crimes?” He said it impatiently, clearly not expecting a response. But one came, clear and confident.

“ I would speak,” Maela’s voice rang out.

Maissel’s stomach clenched. She was with him. She was still by his side. His eyes stretched wide with fierce joy as he turned to her, so widely they watered in the cold wind. She stood there, among her people, straight backed and bulb bellied, her plump chin high and proud above her scarf, and she beamed down at him with just as much ferocious happiness as he gave her. He could not believe he had doubted her.

“You cannot speak,” grated the Ashkhan dismissively. “You are too involved with the suit.”

“I have already been tried for my involvement,” she shot back. “My ‘crimes’ have been atoned for. I stand as free to speak as any of the Zainab.”

Shabael sneered. “Your emotions will taint your speech,” he said. “You are too involved.”

“It is not of emotion that I wish to speak, but facts,” she answered smoothly. “Several specific events which occurred while I was in the homestead of the settled people, events I feel are relevant to this mer’s sentence. But, tell me, Ashkhan Shabael, could you stand before the ancestors and say that emotions have not tainted your words this night?”

His lips compressed above their nubbin of bone. “Complete dispassion is impossible in these situations,” he muttered, “but we have –“

“Oh, let her speak, Shabael!” a voice called suddenly from the crowd. “We’re all curious to know why a girl like her chooses a mer like that!” The voice came from a tiny, bent old crone seated at the front of the crowd to the chandler’s left, wrapped up tight in a black shawl.

“You never can pass up a sordid love affair, can you Muiri?” muttered the Ashkhan almost silently. Maissel barely heard it; certainly no one else did. “Very well!” he went on, loud but reluctant. “Speak your part, Maela.” He stalked across the rocky ground to his place beside the Wise Woman, and all eyes turned to the daughter.

The girl drew herself up under the scrutiny, gathered her dignity and eloquence into a pose of statuesque pride and beauty. “You wish to know why I chose Maissel Sarethi as my first lover? Fine. It is very simple. I chose the fat-smith because he is not a blasphemer, in spite of his upbringing. He is misinformed, he worships the Traitor’s Triumvirate, it is true, but he does so only because there is no higher aspiration in him than to do honor to his ancestors. He has been deluded, from birth, into believing his ‘Almsivi’ are Good Spirits made flesh, but he has admitted to me – admitted to me – that if that were not so, if his false gods have been lying to him for his entire life, then it would be blasphemy for him to continue to worship them, and he would not do it. If he could be shown the truth of history, he would abandon the Triumvirate! They are secondary to him; he honors his good ancestors above all else.”

“But he has not just told me this,” she went on, “he has shown me that it is true, that his Temple is only a vector for his faith, not its embodiment. There came a day, last year, when the priest of the settled people came to this mer’s house and demanded that I be removed, because I was a ‘heretic’. And Maissel Sarethi defended me before his priest. This mer disobeyed the spirit leader of his people for me, refused to cast me out despite that, to a true follower of the settled folk’s faith I should be a despised heretic! He chose me over the false faith of his people, and that is why I chose him!”

She took a long, deep breath; her cheeks burned violet. She watched the Zainab, not Maissel, her eyes defiant and strong. “He may profess to follow their deluded faith,” she went on more calmly, “but in his heart he follows the way of Veloth. His own ancestors have sensed it – he confessed to me that he has never been able to confer with his settled ancestors interred in their temple; they have sensed that he is a true Velothi at heart, and have condemned him for it! And they do him honor by doing so! He may claim to be one of the settled people, but he is nothing like them. He took me in, when they wanted me left to die. He ventures forth into the wilderness, alone, so secret that even the Zainab do not know, while his people cower within their walls! He betrays the secret delicacies of his Temple, just to please me! He hunts the dreugh that even the Salt-Mouth Velothi fear! He fed me, taught me, defended me when they told him to revile my existence. He is nothing like them. There is no danger that this mer would lead my babe astray. I would be proud to take this mer as my husband and the father of my child.” She did look at him, then, purposeful and certain. With one tiny hand she rubbed her protruding belly through her blouse. She rubbed his child.

It was more than he could take. He bowed his head, shoulders shaking, eyes clenched shut, and cried silently in the night, wept for her faith… for her love.

“It is your belief, then, that – based on the Ashkhan’s own reasoning – death and spiritual imprisonment would be an unjust and pointless punishment?” asked Harah after a long, silent pause.

“It is.”

“You would repeat your testimony before the ancestors without the qualms of deception?”

“I would.”

“Then, as Wise Woman, I accept your testimony in extenuation,” she said. Maissel looked up quickly. The world was distorted with his tears; his eyelashes clung together wetly. There was a tiny smile on the Wise Woman’s mouth, almost as of pride. “You have always honored the ancestors well, my daughter, despite your headstrong will. There is no reason to doubt you.”

“No,” growled the Ashkhan, and his voice was like cold steel. “No, there is too much uncertainty, too much danger. You could be wrong, Maela. The sentence stands; he dies.” He strode forward jerkily, his hands ripping at his belt, unsheathing his long, serrated chitin blade. His was the face of a madman as he bore down on Maissel; snarling, contorted, demonic.

“No!” a womer shrieked as the Ashkhan seized a handful of the chandler’s hair, jerking his head back so his throat jutted forward to the edge of the knife. There was a rumble of male voices, a scuffle. Someone jostled the Ashkhan, but his blade did not move from its quivering poise against Maissel’s throat. It seemed strangely still and quiet to the chandler. They were alone; just he and that bony, tattooed demon face and the cold sky above. The knife began to slice.

A womer’s scream by his ear pierced the stillness; the pressure of the blade vanished, and the Ashkhan whirled around with a fearsome snarl. “You cannot do this!” screamed Maela, and he saw with horror that she crouched at his side, two long blades in her hands, facing down Shabael. “Your judgement is compromised! I demand an ancestor court!”

He drew back at that, and something resembling rationality surfaced in his face. “An ancestor court,” he growled.

“You cannot refuse, Ashkhan,” said Harah, from Maela’s side as she helped her daughter to her feet. Belatedly, Maissel realized that he was surrounded by standing Ashlanders; the gulakhans, as well as Harah and her daughter. Derch, he of the Kagouti jaw, held Shabael’s arms back, the blade safely away from Maissel’s throat.

“I know I cannot refuse,” snapped the Ashkhan. He glanced back once at Derch, then jerked his arms out of the mer’s grip and sheathed his blades. “I had no intention of doing so. After all, this one will be judged by the spirits eventually, so it might as well be alive as dead. Prepare yourself, Wise Woman. And the rest of you – clear off! We do not need your bones for this!”

The gulakhans – including Derch – filed away silently, out from within the circle of fires, but Maela remained to rub Maissel’s shoulder discreetly. Her touch was like a balm, the cooling spread of healing, protecting oil on his skin. The rest of the Zainab had crowded in even closer, whispering excitedly just beyond the ring of flames. And Maissel had to wonder… what was an ancestor court?

The Ashkhan was arranging himself bad-naturedly opposite the chandler, seated cross-legged on the rocky dirt. He frowned at Maela, and the girl moved away after one last squeeze of his shoulder. The Ashkhan’s eyes fell shut, and the Wise Woman crouched beside the naked fat-smith.

She whispered urgently. “We have done all we can for you, fat-smith,” she hissed, eyes boring into his. “Now it is up to the ancestors. They will speak through the Ashkhan; he is a spiritual mer, however thick skulled, obstinate, and fire tempered. And he is good enough with his tongue that even spirits find it a useful tool. Bah, fat-smith. You had better hope that my daughter is right about you.” She scrambled to her feet, brushing gravel off her skirts and moving to stand behind him. Maissel could only stare ahead at the seated Ashkhan as the mer’s head drooped further and further forward on his neck. He was stimulated beyond shock, beyond questioning. If something more managed to surprise him at this point, he thought it might just kill him.

A rumble was growing in the chest of the mer before him. He svcked in air through his mouth without lifting his head; the sound was like wind over the maw of a cave. The fires guttered without warning on all sides; their remnants burned dimly blue. A chill breathed on the suddenly dark camp, and something strange tugged at Maissel’s mind, a bizarre sense of coldness and distance that had nothing to do with the physical… and with it, a bizarre sense of recognition. Then Shabael’s head snapped upright. The face that stared at Maissel was not the Ashkhan’s.

It had not changed… but it had. It – flickered. Muscles twitched bizarrely beneath his skin as though played by a hundred puppeteers; the bones danced in his flesh. And his eyes – his eyes were devoid of thought, devoid of emotion, empty as Oblivion, yet clamoring with consciousness. And then the mouth spoke.

“WHY HAVE YOU CALLED MEWEIUS?”

The voice echoed, not in the air, but in his mind, like the calls of a thousand-fold choir down the mouth of an infinite well. It was at once both cacophony and harmony.

“We need your wisdom, honored ones,” answered Harah from behind Maissel, and there was a quaver in her voice. “The false-hearted Velothi before you has committed a crime against the Zainab We ask for your judgement on his sentence!”

The face stared silently forward, twitching and emotionless. His – its – their gaze pierced the chandler like a spike of ice. After a long, quivering pause, the legion voice came once more from Shabael’s quivering lips.

“WE SEE NO BETRAYER OF VELOTH.”

“He is here, before you, great ancestors,” gasped Harah.

Another long pause, then, again,

“WE SEE NO BETRAYER OF VELOTH.”

Harah exhaled in frantic frustration. “Here!” she cried, and laid her hands on his shoulders to shake his bound, naked body. “We have bared him to your sight! Maissel Sarethi, the fat-smith of Vos! He has sired a babe on my daughter!”

Still, the ancestor possessed Ashkhan stared, and this time the silence was even longer. It stretched in the pale dimness of the guttered flames, and Maissel quivered with the fullness of the strange emotion coursing through him. It was almost akin to… exultation. But that made no sense!

“SEND HIM TO ME,” echoed the terrible voice at last, but this time it was deeper, grittier; male. “SEND HIM TO MY HOWLING DOOR. LET HIM FACE THE WRATHFUL CUCKOLD. LET HIM RETRIEVE THE SUET OF KAUSHAD FRUITFUL [censored]. LET HIM CALL UPON US WITH HIS STOLEN CRAFT IN THE SIGHT OF THE ZAINAB. SO SAYETH MEWEIUS, UROSHNORKAUSHAD. WE WILL SEE IF HE IS MY SON AND GRANDSON IN HEART AS WELL AS BLOOD.”

And with one long rattling exhalation, Shabael tumbled forward to the ground, unconscious. Maissel stared unseeingly. The night was silent for an unbreakable second; there was still an unnatural chill in the air. Then the fires flared back to orange brightness, and the Zainab erupted in pandemonium.

Maela’s face loomed abruptly in his catatonic vision, wide eyed but beaming. Her hands squeezed his face as she babbled frantically, exultantly shouting to be heard over the uproar.

“I knew it, oh – I knew it!” she crowed. She smashed her soft lips against his, uncaring of the gag between his teeth and the blood on his cheeks. “I knew you weren’t one of them!” she said breathlessly as her people raged around them, shouting and arguing. “Son of Kaushad, grandson of Uroshnor! You’re one of us, Maissel! You are Zainab!”

The thought penetrated for one moment of clarity as she kissed him fiercely once more. Then his eyes rolled up in his head, and his body thudded to the ground beside Shabael’s. His forehead just touched that of the Ashkhan. They lay there, the sole stillnesses in a maelstrom of excitement; two narrow faced mer with unnaturally large hands and wide lips, side by side on the cold ground. Ashkhan and chandler... great-uncle, and grand-nephew.

I'm gonna have to book mark this. Okay, so now is probably a bad time to jump in when there are so many chapters up, but I'm glad I have till next Monday before students commence. That can only mean: ALL DA TYME TO REED DIS! Some of the chapters are a little long, but that doesn't bother me. Although, some readers may not have time to read it all, and feel intimidated. Or maybe they're just intimidated by your good writing. I'm glad I cam across this. Really, I am. Don't worry too much about comments. There are readers who don't comment, instead, just silently cheer behind this quote unquote "monitor" that we all have. I don't really have any critique to give at the moment.

Keep it up, buddy!

Hey, cool! A reader! Hope you like it!
It is long, ya. For a fanfic. But not long at all for a novel. Maybe that helps some folks? A little perspective?

Anyway, Chapter XVI should be up...tomorrow. Or the next day.

Part Three: Seht

Chapter XVI

“It’s time, Maela.”

“He’s still asleep.”

“So wake him!”

“He needs his rest, after last night!”

The voices tickled Maissel into consciousness. His vision was blurred, his eyes grainy. He rubbed them groggily with the heels of his hands as he blinked up at a ceiling of stretched grey hide. A yurt. He was in a yurt. The space was filled with greyish gloom; the only light came from the partly covered smoke hole. The sky beyond it was a bright, clear blue.

“What he needs is to leave. He is not one of us yet, Maela.”

He propped himself up on his elbows, and a thick, scratchy blanket slid down his chest. His hands and feet were unbound, but beneath the blanket he was still as naked as he had been when he was pulled from his pre-marital vigil.

“The ancestors named him of our blood!”

The floor of the yurt was lumpy with thick layers of hides and rugs; only a small space in the center was left as bare ground, and that had been ringed with smooth stones as a fire pit. An iron cookpot hung from a tripod above it, but the ashes beneath were cold and white. He rubbed the small of his back as he looked around; he was still sore from the blows of his capture. The walls of the yurt were hung with decorative patterned carpets and lined with large storage urns, but Maissel could not see any clothing, much less anything that might fit him.

“You heard what the ancestors said, Maela. Do not become foolish over the mer. That he is of our blood is not enough; he has lived too long among the settled people. He must prove himself. Wake him.”

Nothing for it, he supposed. He would just have to cover himself as best he could until he found something real to wear. He scrambled to his feet, wrapping the blanket around his chest; it fell midway down his thigh in thick, inflexible folds.

“Very well,” came Maela’s voice sullenly, and the yurt’s entrance flap jostled aside just as the chandler was about to leave. Maela stopped abruptly just inside, staring up at him, mouth gaping in that characteristic surprised little ‘o’. Maissel could not think for looking at her. She was so – so beautiful. Her eyes. Her dimpled cheeks. Her protruding belly. He could not think, but eventually he managed to speak.

“I am awake,” he grated.

“So you are,” replied Maela softly, and a wondering smile spread across her face with the words. Her dimples bloomed like stoneflowers in fog laden spring. She stared at him, joyous, nervous, and he stared back, completely incapable of action. She took one small, hesitant step toward him, and then in a rush he had her in his arms, the blanket crushed between them in his haste, her head nestled beneath his chin, her arms around his neck, her belly sandwiched against his. Their child, pressed up against him.

“Maela,” he whispered into her hair, and cupped the back of her head in one hand.
“I’m so sorry, Maissel,” she murmured into his neck. “So sorry I couldn’t give you any sign at the trial, but we had it planned, it had to be a certain way, but you looked so – bereft, and –“

“Maela,” he repeated, cupping her heart-shaped face in his huge hands and tipping it up to his, “Maela it’s fine. It’s nothing. You were amazing. I am the one who should apologize, for not following you to your people when you asked it of me. That you have had to bear the burden of this child alone, that I abandoned you – it makes me ashamed to live, Maela.”

“Do not be ashamed of yourself, fat-smith!” whispered Maela fiercely. “Never that! I chose to leave. I could not abandon my people. But, Maissel, now you are my people…”

“What are you doing in there, girl?” snapped Harah’s voice from outside the yurt. “Jumping his bones already? Get him dressed and get out here!”

“She’s right,” sighed Maela. “You have to get dressed and on your way. The Ashkhan is very impatient.” But she made no move away from him.

“Impatient for what?” asked Maissel quietly. “To kill me? Maela, what was that about, last night, at the end? Am I – am I really one of the Zainab? It happened so fast.”

“Oh, Maissel,” she whispered. Her eyes squeezed shut as she smiled tremulously up at him. “You are, you are you are you are, in my heart. And in yours. But the rest of the tribe must accept you as well, and they will only do that if you can prove yourself, so you must get dressed and go! If – if you want to become one of us, that is. If you want to stay with me.” Her eyes slid away from his, nervously, fearfully.

He pressed his lips softly down on hers. “Do not be ridiculous, girl,” he grated when they parted. “I will do anything to stay with you. My existence has been a mockery of life since you left it. Now, where can I find some clothes?” He released her and stepped backward, looking around.

Maela blinked at him in silent amazement, an incredulous smile dimpling her plump cheeks. Then she threw herself at him once more, smashing her face against his bare chest and squeezing him around the midriff hard enough to make his spine creak. He stumbled, surprised, but before he could react she had released him once more and was bustling about the yurt, busy and beaming and vibrant.

“Take these,” she said, pulling a tightly rolled pair of trousers from one of the urns and tossing them to him. “Can’t have you freezing again. And these,” she added, sending a linen shirt and a guar hide vest through the air as well. He caught the clothes awkwardly, still trying to hold up his blanket. “We’ll find some boots for you later, but that should do for now,” she said, turning back to him. She put her hands on her hips, leaning backward slightly to balance her belly, and raised an eyebrow as he stood there with the clothes in his arms. “Well?” she said. “Get going, fat-smith. It’s not like I haven’t seen it all before.”

Maissel knew that, of course. He was not concerned over Maela seeing his wrinkled old body, though he did have his reservations about whether or not she actually found that body pleasing. No; it was just that – the last time he had dressed in front of a womer, that womer had been Chana. And the thought churned guiltily in his stomach. But he shrugged, and let the blanket fall to the ground as he unrolled the trousers and began pulling the tough fabric onto his legs. Maela watched his awkward hopping progress with a lascivious smirk.

“Nothing any of the Zainab have not seen, now, you realize,” he growled as he pulled the laces tight. “After last night.”

“Indeed,” agreed Maela, blushing suddenly. “I may have to fight off old Muiri. I saw her and her estimations, factoring in the temperature. There might be others, as well.”

Maissel grunted a laugh as he tugged the shirt over his head. The weave of the kresh linen was subtly different against his skin from that which he had worn his entire life. “A good joke,” he grated. “Not all womer have as strange a taste in mer as you, Maela.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the girl musingly. “You are handsome enough, and your body is fit. I would not be surprised if you garnered a few admirers. Kaushad was very famous for his talents. It is said that no womer could resist him. There may be those who will want a turn in his son’s blankets, to see if you have inherited any of his skill.”

Maissel paused in lacing up his tough leather vest to fix her with a stern look. “I do not know if this Kaushad was truly my father,” he said seriously, “or if I have inherited his questionable talents, but no other womer in the Zainab will have the chance to find out.”

Maela grinned at him. “Oh, I know, fat-smith, because I do know that you are his son, and I have tasted of your own ‘questionable’ talents, and I am not about to share them.”

The chandler met her eyes briefly, then shook his head ironically and set to putting the finishing touches on his attire. They felt – odd, these clothes. He had always worn his clothes loose, but Maela had chosen a much tighter fit for him. He was not used to the heavy, durable weave of the trousers, or the way they hugged his thighs and snugged his butt and crotch. That would take some getting used to. The shirt, too, was different, with its fitted sleeves and tight collar, and the vest felt almost restricting. He wasn’t sure that he liked these Ashlander clothes. But by the time he had finished twisting and stretching and squirming in his trousers, Maela was looking at him with surprise and approval.

“You look… different, in proper clothes,” she said as she took his hand. “Not like the harmless chandler at all. Younger, too, if you’ll believe it.”

Maissel barked a laugh. “I won’t,” he grated. Maela smiled at him silently, then pulled him forward and out of the dark yurt.

The morning was clear, cloudless, and blue, with a brisk wind and a healthy nip in the air. The camp was quiet, but busy with the morning’s work; here a young couple was seated on the ground outside their yurt, laughing and kissing as they fed each other saltrice porridge; there a trio of grizzled warriors was roasting the haunch of a nix on a spit and joking roughly; there the bent old crone, Muiri, was beating her clay cup on her stool and calling for more mazte; there a stringy-necked womer was hauling buckets of water from whatever stockpile the tribe had. It was a peaceful scene, a domestic scene, calm and happy and completely distanced from the savagery of the night before. Still, Maissel watched it all in quiet wariness; he was no longer alone with Maela, and he had not forgotten how he had come to her.

“Mother’s already gone,” said the girl, pulling him forward. “Probably thought Shabael would need placating. Come on!”

She led him away through the camp. The yurt in which he had awoken stood on the outskirts, snugged up by an outcropping of sandy quartz in the side of a tall hill covered with death-flopped wickwheat. The Zainab had chosen a sheltered spot for his trial, hidden away in a gentle valley veiled on three sides by the terrain. Two lonesome, stout-trunked elms watched from the crests of the hills, but that was the extent of the vegetation apart from the wintering grasses.

They carried with them a shroud of wary silence. Maela strode with confidence and open – perhaps feigned – unconcern, but her people went cold and quiet when they saw her with the grey haired chandler in tow. Conversations died; breakfasts were abandoned; affection was chilled. They stopped all to watch him go by, to eye with calculating eyes the fit of the Ashlander clothes on his body, their dark mouths hard and distrustful. And yet there was a curiousity to them as well, the tiniest twinkle of amazement on the edges of those molten stares. How could it be, their eyes asked, that this settled mer with whom we have dealt for so long should turn out to be one of us? How could it be that he had been the son of Kaushad the Fruitful all of that time, and they had not known? Could the ancestors be wrong? Shouldn’t they be able to tell their own blood, just by sight? They watched, and they wondered, and they waited, for only his actions would tell them for sure whether he was truly Velothi at heart.

Maissel averted his eyes from their weighing looks. He quickened his step, walked at Maela’s side, and stared straight ahead, unseeingly. He could feel their reserved curiousity, and it made his bones prickle; it stirred the hard questions about himself – was Kaushad really my father? How could my mother do that? Am I a child of [censored]? Is this why Aravel will not speak to me from the spirit world? Who were my parents? Who am I? – that he had let sink down to the depths of his heart after the shock of their discovery, down in the depths where went all the things he could not face, down where they could not shatter him, could not turn his entire life into a lie. Too, he was not particularly inclined to greet with cheer the people who had kidnapped him and subjected him to public trial in such ignominy. He could tell that that was what was on the minds of some of the older womer, despite that he saw them only peripherally; those eyes noticed more how snugly his trousers fit him than how odd it was to see him in Zainab clothes. Maela was right, he realized, and blushed furiously. It was an odd feeling, having his body admired, and not a comfortable one. Certainly he was not comfortable with knowing that everyone he saw had in turn seen him in full, although they did not appear to be bothered by it. People in Vos had always said that Ashlanders were scandalously casual about those things, even in public, but he had never actually believed it. That would take some getting used to, as well.

They came to the center of camp, at the lowest point of the valley. Here was where last night’s scene had played itself out; there was the ring of firepits, all but one blackened and cold; there were the unraveling remains of his bonds in the center of the ring. And there was the Ashkhan who had proposed to trap Maissel’s soul in stone for all eternity, with Harah and three other Zainab, seated on smooth rocks around the sole remaining fire. An iron pot hung above the pale flames, steam rising from its top.

Shabael shot them a surly glance as they approached, but remained silent, staring down moodily at his bare feet on the rocky ground. His much pierced face was significantly less intimidating by daylight, with its weak, youthful pout, but Maissel was still not sure he was ready to sit with the mer who had held the knife to his throat just the night before, and almost on that very spot. But Maela squeezed his hand encouragingly, and urged him to take a seat across the fire, so he joined them, wary and tense. Harah nodded bracingly to him as he did, but none of the rest made any sign of having noticed. There were two other mer there; the beefy Derch, fully clothed with his tough, kagouti hide vest, and another, skinny, with a weak chin, thinning hair, and a chitin long bow propped against his rock. And there was a womer, as well; a long limbed youth with straight copper hair bobbed close to her skull, garbed in full chitin armor that had clearly been made especially for womer. All three sat in silence, their elbows on their knees, staring at the pot above the pale flames and actively ignoring the chandler.

So he watched in silence as well, though he was burning with questions and resentments over his capture. At his side, on her own rock, Maela kept straight faced and reserved, but she sent him tiny searching, encouraging looks every few seconds. Her mother alternated between the same and discreet surveyance of the Ashkhan’s countenance. And the steam roiled in the air as the sun crept over the hilltop behind them and the day began to fill with the sounds of Zainab life in earnest, as the kwama eggs boiled like and rolled in the frothing waters.

Eventually Shabael roused himself with a grunt and a heavy puff of air through his thin nostrils. “Should be ready by now,” he grated. “Would you do the straining, Kanly?”

“I suppose,” sighed the mer with the weak chin. He pushed himself to his feet and busied himself with the pot, removing it from the flames and carrying it aside, behind Derch’s broad back. When he returned, it was with a wicker basket of steaming, white-blue eggs. He handed it to the Ashkhan and resumed his own seat.

“Eat lightly,” grunted Shabael as he plucked up one of the hot eggs. “You do not want a larded stomach, today.” He passed the basket to Harah and jerked his knife free from its sheath to begin peeling away the thick, leathery skin of the egg. The basket passed in silence around the circle. Maissel took his ration with an anticipatory rumble in his stomach; it had been a long time indeed since his last meal. The egg was only comfortably warm against his skin, despite having just been removed from its cookpot; Dunmer were more tolerant of heat than most mer. It steamed in his palm as he waited for Maela to finish peeling her own and to pass him her knife. Scalding water droplets collected on his fingers, dripped down to pool in his palm around the egg. When he finally got it, that first slice of egg flesh was unsurpassably sublime. It split like cold jelled fat between his teeth.

The Ashkhan watched him, tight mouthed, as he ate. His eyes were hard, but there was none of the unreasoning, vengeful fury in them that had shown itself the night before. His blade bit slowly through the greyish flesh of his own egg, and he spoke at last to the chandler.

“I am told that the ancestors have set you a task,” he began. A piece of egg flesh slipped between his wide lips.

“That is what I have gathered as well,” replied Maissel gravely. He had gone from ignored to the focus of attention. “But do you not remember? The words came from your lips.”

“I am the tongue, not the mind, ignorant fat-smith. I cannot recall what is said when the ancestors speak through me. I rely on others to inform me of my words, my Wise Woman, my gulakhans.” He paused, looked down, cut a thick slice of egg, his knife biting softly toward his other thumb. “They tell me the ancestors have named you of the blood of the Zainab,” he went on more quietly. He looked up at the chandler from beneath his brows, piercing and direct. “Kaushad Fruitful [censored] had many, many offspring, though few survived to sire or bear their own babes. The Salt-Mouth Velothi took payment for the greatness of Uroshnor and his son in the flesh of Kaushad’s children. It is not unlikely that my grandfather sired more children than the Zainab were aware, however; he was extremely virile. If it is true… if you are his son, by some secret mating… then we are blood kin, you and I. You would be my great-uncle.”

“The ancestors spoke, Ashkhan,” put in Maela quietly. “There can be no doubt.”

The Ashkhan frowned, then shrugged. “Of course, you are right,” he grated. “I am simply… reluctant… to accept. It is an awkward situation, would you not agree… uncle?”

“Awkward indeed,” growled Maissel, “considering that just last night you proposed trapping my soul in stone for eternity and held the knife to my throat to do the deed.” He took another bite of egg, meeting the Ashkhan’s stare with his own. His grey hair lifted softly in the wind.

Shabael barked a laugh. “He speaks with forthrightness, at least,” he said to his gulakhans. “You must remember, fat-smith, you were not of our blood, then. I merely fulfilled my duty to my tribe. If I did it with more enthusiasm than was necessary, well… I cannot be tried for that.” He grinned at the chandler, and for the first time Maissel saw the dark gaps of missing teeth in that smile. “But, fat-smith, things have changed. We know your heritage, now. That for which you were tried… well, it is mostly moot, now. You cannot be condemned for tainting the blood of the Zainab if it is your blood as well.” He did not look particularly pleased at the fact, but he went on without comment. “No; now, the issue has changed. Now what we must decide is whether the Zainab can accept your presence among our yurts. Well, that is – if you wish to be among us?” He quirked an eyebrow hopefully.

Maissel’s wide mouth thinned. “Do you expect me to abandon my child?” he growled.

The Ashkhan shrugged. “You had no problems abandoning its mother, here, before you knew of her condition. Who can say to what depths Zainab blood might sink in the hands of the settled people?”

The chandler gritted his teeth, stiffening under the cold gazes of all the Ashlanders. Even Maela was watching him, her face gone flat and suspicious with her Ashkhan’s insinuations. “I will not deny that to abandon my home and my trade after so many years gives me – pause.” Shabael’s lips twitched in a sneer. “But I have seen what my life would be if I stayed there, and I cannot live long like that, hating myself and my work. Even were Maela not with child, I would stay with her, now. I was an ignorant fool not to, before. I thought the things in me that she brought to the surface would return to their slumber, but I was wrong; I cannot go back. For Maela and my child, both, I will join the Zainab.”

“You always were a true Velothi at heart, fat-smith,” said Maela softly, unsmiling but with luminous eyes. “I just inverted you.”

“That remains to be seen,” snapped the Ashkhan, cutting off Maissel’s reply. “We shall see if he has the heart of a true follower of Veloth. You wish to join the Zainab, for the embrace of our Wise Woman’s daughter and her child? Then earn it, fat-smith. Prove yourself to us.” He tore a bite of egg viciously away.

“I have every intention of doing so,” answered Maissel. “But I am afraid I do not understand the nature of the task.”

Shabael leaned back on his rock silently. His hard red eyes bored into Maissel’s for a long minute. His jaw was tight; there was a telltale twitch in the spiny hyoids piercing his temples. When he spoke, it was in a tone much darkened and softened; a grave, rasping whisper tinged with resentment.

“Of course you do not understand it,” he said. “You understand nothing of our faith, whatever the mother of your child claims. You still do not know what it means to be a mer of faith, though I have explained it to you once already.” He raised a callused finger to tap one of the eyeteeth piercing his nostrils. “The ancestors have called you to them, to make a pilgrimage as I have done so many times before you.” He shook his head. “And you do not even know, when the ancestors spoke the words right in front of you.”

“How could he know?” put in Harah reasonably. “He was not raised to our ways.”

“I know that, Harah,” replied the Ashkhan softly, “but, still, it does not bode well for his success that he does not have this intuitive connection with our ancestors. How can I integrate one such as that into our people?”

“I will learn,” grated Maissel. “I will learn your ways. Our ways. I must. Because, Ashkhan, what you do not understand is that I did not have ancestors to call upon, until last night. The mer I thought was my father has never answered my call, nor his parents either; they knew, though I did not, that there was no blood bond between us. My mother, too, has remained silent, though I know not why. I do not know how to have ancestors, though I have done honor to those I thought were mine all my life. To actually hear their voices, to have their counsel at last… you think I will do anything but cherish that?”

Shabael held his gaze measuringly. Then he nodded, grudgingly, and sheathed his blade, breakfast consumed. “We will teach you as we can, fat-smith, if your desire is sincere,” he grated. “But only when you have proven your worth, your Velothi heart. Yet perhaps you may take your first lessons from the proving itself. For you must go to the ancestors through their Howling Door, fat-smith, and know them in their chilling beds.” He leaned forward over the pale flames, elbows on his knees, broad hands loosely clasped.

“To the south and west of here, fat-smith, there is a pass in the mountains which separate these plains from the Mountain. A foyada runs there, north and south. At the southern termination of that lava stream, where it is cut by the foyada Ashur-Dan on its way to the Molag Amur, there is a cave whose only entrance is a narrow cleft in the mountain top.” His brow tightened. “This is the Howling Door. It is the secret place of our people, fat-smith. The burial of the Zainab; the chill sanctuary of our ancestors. It is a most sacred place.”

“Derch, Kanly, and Yahad will guide you to the entrance,” he went on, nodding to the two gulakhans and the long-legged womer sharing their fire, “but only because you do not know the way. They will not accompany you within; you must meet the ancestors alone.”

“Once you have reached our burial, you must find the mummy of Kaushad Fruitful phalus… your presumed father. The ancestors have commanded that you retrieve his preserved suet and use it to summon them before us, as proof of your heart.”

Maissel frowned. “I do not understand,” he said. “Use my father’s suet – from the loins, I presume – to summon his spirit? How am I to do this? I am no priest, not that any priest I have ever met summoned ancestors by their fat. How do you expect me to do this?”

The Ashkhan opened his mouth to answer, but Maela forestalled him.

“We do not know, Maissel,” she said. “We only know that the ancestors have commanded it, and that it must thereby be possible.”

“It was done, once,” broke in her mother distantly. She stared down into the flames. “I remember hearing of this, of spiritual candles and other wonders, from the time when the Zainab still had our own fat-smiths.”

Six heads turned to stare at her with varying degrees of surprise. “The Zainab had chandlers of their own, at one time?” Maissel choked out.

“Of course we did!” answered Harah, tossing her head proudly and resembling her daughter something fierce. “But Uroshnor was slain out of his time, and the Salt-Mouth Velothi took vengeance on our people for our long strength with their now characteristic ferocity. Their numbers swelled; ours dwindled, and the tradition of the fat-smith was somehow lost. But now you are here, fat-smith,” she said forcefully, “and you will reinstate those traditions among our people. It is my belief that that is most of your trial. You must find in yourself the ancient ways of the Zainab fat-smiths. You must rediscover the spiritual face of your trade.”

She fell silent, and Maissel frowned moodily down at his bare feet. He was supposed to rediscover ancient secrets of spiritual Zainab chandlery? How could he do that? How could chandlery even touch on ancestral magic?

Warm fingers touched his wrist, and he looked up into Maela’s confident eyes.

“You can do this, Maissel,” she murmured. “You have already done it. Remember your ancestor soaps.”

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he did have some idea how the ancient fat-smiths might have used their craft to remain in touch with their ancestors. Perhaps the only reason he had never felt any spiritual touch from his holy soaps had been that they had not contained the ash of the right ancestors. If he changed that… if he used the fat of his own, true father… the thought was grotesque, repulsive, obscene, and yet… those feelings did not really touch him. They washed over him, mysteriously incompatible with his heart.

And he looked up, and nodded firmly to the Wise Woman. “ I will try. I make no promises, except that; I will use all of my knowledge and skill, and try.” She smiled briefly back at him. “But how am I to find Kaushad’s – my father’s – mummy, in the burial? How can I know which is his?”

The Ashkhan shook his head. “We cannot tell you what path to take in the wraithways. That, too, is part of your test. You must learn connection with the spirits of our people, must sense them and soothe them if they resent your presence – as they will. You must be able to feel which step is correct, which false, and distinguish the dead by sight and heart-sense alone, to be one of us. If you cannot find your father through the Howling Door, you will have proven that you are no true Velothi at heart, and your blood will be moot.”

Maissel took a deep breath. He was not sure that he could do what was necessary. But for his child – for Maela – for himself – he would try. “Very well,” he said. “When should I leave?”

“As soon as possible,” answered the Ashkhan immediately with a wry, nasty curl to his lips. “But there is… one final thing you should know, concerning the wraithway. You see… much of it has been inaccessible for many years.”

The chandler frowned at the Ashkhan’s sly smile. “What do you mean, inaccessible?” he growled. “Do you yourself not possess one of my father’s bones? How did you obtain it, if his corpse cannot be accessed?”

“You mistake me, settled mer,” replied Shabael. “I meant inaccessible for you, not for me. There are no physical barriers, if that was what you were thinking, no blockages or collapses. The wraithway is quite sound. The impediment is spiritual; only with courage and daring can it be overcome. You see, fat-smith… the wraithway is quite haunted.”

“And what else would it be, s’wit?” snapped Maissel. “It is the house of the ancestors; surely spirits will abound. Do you really think I frighten so easily? I am not afraid of my ancestors.”

Shabael glowered. “You should be afraid,” he grated darkly. “For the ancestors are strange and distant; they deserve our fear as well as our love and respect. But the haunting of which I speak is not even so benign, for it is not a haunting by our ancestors. For many, many years now, the burial of the Zainab has been infested with a malevolent spirit not of our blood.”

Maissel frowned. “How?”

“None know,” answered Harah, jumping in. “The spirit will not speak to us, or respond to our attempts at placation, no matter how deeply we abase ourselves. It looks on us always with a hatred that curdles the blood. I went many times in the attempt, years ago, but always failed. My mother knew no more of it than I; she too was baffled when the spirit manifested itself for the first time, malignant and terrifying, in the wraithway during Kaushad’s funeral procession. Yes, your father,” she added at his sharp, surprised look. “They were forced to place his mummy in a separate part of the wraithway than he had requested. But since then, even Kaushad’s corpse has fallen under the shade’s stalking sphere. It is said that he pulls the very essence of life and happiness from the souls of those who are too persistent in their trespasses.”

“It is true,” added Shabael softly. He watched Maissel steadily. “I have passed that trial, and I know. Still willing to make the journey, fat-smith? No one will think the less of you for it, grey hair. No one among your own people, anyway.”

“I would think less of myself,” snarled Maissel. “I will pass this trial, hostile spirit or no, or I will be slain in the attempt, but my child will know that its father as no coward. Whatever my grand-nephew may say.”

Shabael’s mouth tightened; the eyeteeth flared with his nostrils. “You do not speak like a coward now,” he rasped, “but we will see whether your heart remains true when faced with real danger. We will see whether you are strong enough to survive life as a Zainab, or weak and soft like the rest of your people.” He rose to his feet, glaring down at Maissel. “It is time to depart, fat-smith. The Howling Door awaits.” The chandler nodded tightly as he stood to face the Ashkhan over the flames. Two narrow faced, broad fisted mer, glaring at each other with stubborn resentment in their hearts, one young, tattooed and pierced, the other grey haired and harshly grooved by age. So remarkably similar, really, when their appearances were stripped away, when all their posturing and self-delusions were removed. Theirs was a shared blood and a shared temperament, of rocky stubbornness and appreciation for simple pleasures – the same temperament that had driven Kaushad Fruitful [censored] to sire thirteen children on thirteen separate womer. And as they stood there, their eyes clashing, that theirs was a family feud was painfully obvious to the onlookers; it was shouted in the twin stiffnesses of their spines, in their wide lips and bloody eyes.

Shabael at last broke the silence. He turned away from his great-uncle. “Go fetch your supplies,” he said to his gulakhans. “And find some boots for this villager! Big ones! He has feet like a guar!”

I'd just like to say I'm in the process of reading this on TIL.

AN: Hope you like it, Thoughtcriminal and whoever else may be reading!

Chapter XVII

It took Maissel most of two days just to convince his guides that he was not, in fact, a doddering old fool liable to break his ankle in a kwama forager’s rooting hole. All three – Derch, Kanly, and young Yahad – seemed to be under the impression that in all his one hundred and seventy five years he had never once set food outside his village to explore Vvardenfell’s wilds; they led him by the easiest, smoothest, and consequently most circuitous paths, along the dried silt beds of summer gullies, twisting and winding with painful deliberation between the hills. Derch set the pace at a quick walk; a bald insult to any Dunmer, fleet-footed as they were, but particularly so to the chandler who had been running in those lands longer than any of his guides had lived. Age showed no signs yet of having nibbled at his vital functions, only at his superfice; his thighs still thrived in the slow burn of the journey; his feet still reveled in the jolt of the jog.

He said nothing, though, no matter how much it galled to be treated with so much disrespect. It had occurred to him that to propose a different pace would simply make the Ashlanders think he attempted to live up to the way a Zainab should be instead of simply being Zainab by nature; it would alienate them, instead of gaining their respect. He would have to think of some other way to do that. So he kept his silence, even when they passed the bare dirt tracks climbing the hills that would shorten their journey by hours; even when bulky Derch made a point of cutting away dead branches in their path for Maissel’s convenience despite that they barely impeded their progress; even when tall, narrow Kanly at his back caught his elbow if he as much as scuffed a step in the smooth alluvium and water-swirled brush deposits of the gully bed; even when Yahad reappeared before them on one of her scouting runs with a long shaft of scavenged brush wood for the ‘poor old mer to steady his steps’. He took their treatment in stony silence; accepted the walking staff, but merely carried it.

It was a silence incited by more than Maissel’s resentment and pragmatism; in large part, it was merely reactionary to the grimly reticent attitudes of his guides. To say the least, they were none of them happy to have been saddled with the guidance of an incompetent settled mer through the wilderness to the most sacred site of their ancestry. Though all were meticulously formal and superficially polite, their displeasure was evident. Derch stalked before him, broad shoulders swinging aggressively forward and back with each step, thick, meaty arms dangling at his sides with his pudgy, comically disjointed hands, and each time he turned back to Maissel his broad, squat face was set in a blank mask of buried angst, his little eyes squinting ever so slightly with anger, muscles rigid beneath the heavy flesh.

Kanly, with his weak chin, prominent mouth, and unusually heavy sprinkling of reddish stubble, was better at hiding his disdain for the task; he merely looked resigned and aloof, not pugnacious. But he too was silent, just a tall, narrow figure in spiky chitin armor at Maissel’s back, bow in his raw-tendoned hand and a leather quiver at his hip filled with racer-plumed arrows.

Of them all, Yahad might have been the easiest to draw into conversation, had he wanted to; she just seemed disgusted with his match with Maela, her fellow in youth, and appalled at the idea of possibly being required to accept a grizzled, useless old mer near dicentenarianism into her tribe; her lip curled derisively whenever she looked at him. She was young, though, and full of life and her own opinions; it would be easy to get her to speak if he merely offered her an opportunity to mock him and point out his ‘weaknesses’. Or it would have been easy, had she not been gone most of the day, ranging over the hills forward and back, vigorous in her lust for exertion and the power of her young body. Apparently, she was one of the Zainab’s most skilled young scouts, or so he gathered from comments exchanged between the mer before they departed. Certainly she looked it, with her long loping stride, her thin boned, straight backed frame, her cropped copper hair flaring in the sun like molten metal as she crested the hills in the distance. The light chitin pike she carried overtopped her by at least a head, but she held it with the familiarity and confidence of one who knew its function and how to help that function’s realization.

And so, by the time the sun fell bloody and raging behind Red Mountain’s bulk and their little party pulled aside to make camp in a small hollow sheltered by both the rock-rough hillside and an enormous split-barked elm, Maissel had had quite enough. He was silent still, though, even as his guides quietly ignored his efforts to help set up the camp, even as they fetched him a seat and sent him off to brood by their small fire like a mind-sapped grandfather. He held his tongue as those young Ashlanders built up the flames and passed out the rations, even when they gave him a tough, oily seedcake as a concession to his ‘delicate settled palate’ instead of the tough, sour scrib jerky that they ate, the jerky that was the true ration of the Dunmeri traveler. He sat on his stone before the flames as dusk crept close and curious around the bundle of orange light, as his three guides stared blank faced and unspeaking at the crackling fire, their features harshly and craggily contrasted. And he said nothing when at last broad armed Derch rose from his seat to spread his bed roll a short distance from the brooding coal bed, said nothing when the three withdrew into the night for a hushed discussion, and nothing too when Yahad stationed herself against the trunk of the thick elm for first watch without letting Maissel know when his own would be. He already knew; he would not have one. No need to disturb the weak old mer’s sleep, after all. He held his silence, no matter how much it grated to let those arrogant upstart striplings insult him so baldly.

But for all his reserve, the chandler was not idle. Unseen in the dark, he scraqed away at the tip of the stick Yahad had given him, narrowing it to a sharp point. The subsiding coals were still hot enough to char it to hardness. They thought he was a babe in the wilderness, despite his grey hair and grooved cheeks. They thought he had not even so much skill as they would expect from a decade old infant. They thought him weak, and incompetent, and a disgrace upon their blood.

They were wrong.



Derch led them up a high saddle midmorning the next day, leaving one valley and entering the next. At its peak, where the ancient, dusty footpath dodged narrowly between two slabs of rough granite, the whole of the southern Grazelands were suddenly laid out before them, rolling and crinkling and mounding in gold-brown folds. To the east loomed a tall spine of slab-sided mountains, black with the detritus of Red Mountain towering above them. They marched north and south as though drawn by hand, walling off the edge of the plains.

Maissel laid a hand on Derch’s thick shoulder. The mer stopped, looking back with his eyes set in clear expectation of incompetence.

“Is that our destination?” asked Maissel gravely, ignoring the mer’s expression and raising one arm to point to a narrow gap in the mountains in the distance.

“It is,” growled Derch.

Maissel nodded, and turned away, back to Kanly, who stood impatiently behind, tapping his bow on the rocky ground.

“You seem wearied by this journey, sera,” Maissel grated. “No doubt escorting me is a tiresome task. Feel free to range ahead, if you wish. You can travel much faster than I, and your clansmer is surely enough protection. Perhaps you could even take down some fresh game for our meal tonight,” he added, nodding to the bow. He spoke in a low, rumbling tumble, stolid and uninflected.

Kanly’s tough lips twitched with a restrained derisive smile, and he nodded once before loping on ahead down the path, readying an arrow from his quiver. Derch blinked flatly and sourly at Maissel, but continued on down the path without comment. The chandler followed, wide mouth set and firm, the tip of his makeshift, fire hardened spear hidden as it ground into the dirt with each step. The vista was obscured as they descended into the brush strewn valley, but Maissel had the image in his mind; for the first time in two days, he knew exactly where he was. He had spent over a century and a half roaming those hills; he knew them, whatever the Zainab thought. He followed Derch obediently through that valley, matching his plodding pace. But when they reached its end, where the passage narrowed to the shallow, twisting ravine years of monsoons had cut between the hills to the lowlands beyond – he vanished. Three quick steps up the steep side of the stream bed, and he was gone, silent and invisible behind a quartz outcropping. He wasn’t sure how long it would take Derch to realize that he was gone, but he did not particularly care; on the heights, he could keep well ahead of him.

He set off without pause, marking a line around the contour of the hill at a steady jog, spear held upright and ready for any crotchety nix or alit that might show. He could see Derch in the valley below, a tiny figure inching along the stream bed, still oblivious that his charge had vanished. Considering that, it was unlikely that the mer would look up and spot him, especially with his earth tone Ashlander clothing, but still, he kept the rocks and sparse vegetation of the hillside between them wherever possible. He kept pace with the mer, for the most part; he was not quite ready to abandon his guide entirely.

He had been traveling on his own on the hillside for nearly half an hour before an ululating cry echoed suddenly from below; Derch, calling back his fellows. It was what he had been waiting for. He crept down the rocky slope toward where the sound had arisen.

Kanly had already returned by the time he reached the bottom. The two mer stood there on the dry silt, arms crossed and talking quietly, and he retreated a short way back up the slope and sneaked as quietly as he could toward them. A thick clump of hackle-lo clung to the hillside on a ledge just above the Ashlanders; their huge, dead leaves lay flopped flat and propped up on each other a few inches above the ground. Maissel lowered himself to his belly and crawled beneath, to the edge of the ledge.

“… at least Shabael will be pleased,” Kanly was saying.

“Frankly, I don’t give a damn whether the Ashkhan will be happy,” came Derch’s gruff growl. “Do you not realize how much of a fit Maela is going to have if we can’t find that n’wah?”

“She’s pregnant. What can she do?”

There was a snarl, and a yip. “That makes it worse, you idiot,” Derch bit off. “She’s already been touchy as a mating kagouti all year. The only good thing about the damn fat-smith is that he somehow turns her to crystallized marshmerrow just by being there.”

“I still don’t see why this is any worse,” snapped the other mer sourly. “So he’s gone. He was just going to die in the wraithways anyway.”

“But if he died in the wraithways, the girl would just be mad with sorrow. If we lose him and he gets eaten by mudcrabs or something, she’ll be mad with fury. At us.”

“Who’s getting eaten by mudcrabs?” chimed in a third voice – lighter, softer; Yahad had returned to Derch’s call.

“No one,” growled Derch. “At least if we can get to that n’wah fat-smith in time.”

“What – you mean you lost that old geezer?” laughed Yahad derisively.

“Watch your tone with your elders, girl. I did not lose him; he vanished. Must have tripped on a rock and hit his head, or something.”

“So what do we do?” asked Kanly.

“We find him. Probably back along this trail somewhere, but he may have been found by a pack of nix and dragged away, or he might have woken and wandered off in confusion, so we’ll have to check in all directions. I’ll check back the way we came; Kanly, you make circles out from here; Yahad, check the path ahead. If you find anything, give a cry and make your way back here. If not – well, let’s plan to meet at sunset at the pass. Understood?”

“Got it,” answered Yahad. “By Azura, though, what an incompetent idiot. We should have tied him up and carried him the way you captured him, Derch.”

There was a harsh laugh. “It would have been faster, at least. But enough; let’s get moving.”

Maissel waited until three sets of footfalls had drifted into the distance before he crawled backwards out from beneath the brush. There was one thing for which those tight clothes were useful; he would never have been able to do that in silence in his own clothes.

His lips were stretched in a wide, fierce grin as he straightened up and set off along the steep hillside, paralleling Yahad’s path below. Incompetent, was he? They would see how incompetent this old mer was, the arrogant whelps. He overtook Yahad quickly, cutting a straight path as he did where she twisted to follow the curvature of the valley. And then he was off, running over the tan-gold hills, over the grey sided buttes and rocky bluffs, booted feet pounding along ridges and down into the shallow rolling bowls and lowlands with their elms and long banks of brush, the biting wind in his watering eyes, the sky a limitless steel bowl above, the mineral swill of his waterskin on his gums, between his teeth, his Ashlander clothes rubbing and stretching comfortably with his flexing muscles, the handle of his makeshift spear gone slippery in his sweating hand. South he went, veering off from the circuitous path his guides had chosen, south and west toward the dark mountains. And carefully he went, putting hillsides and trees and outcroppings of rock between himself and where he estimated Yahad would be. He avoided crests, for the most part, unless he knew there was a higher beyond such that he could not profile himself against the sky. The winds gusted, the sun soared, and Maissel ran.

He paused just once, an hour or two after the sun reached its apex, to gnaw voraciously in the shelter of a rock fall turned hackle-lo grove on the few strips of sour scrib jerky he had stolen from Derch’s pack. But it was a rest of just moments; for as he stood, hands on his hips, huffing cold air through his mouth, his cheek bulging tightly with jerky, a figure moved on the ridge he had crossed perhaps fifteen minutes before. A rare shaft of direct sunlight fell through the low clouds, and a copper halo blazed around the figure’s head. Yahad. No telling if she had seen him, but she was loping down the slope in his direction regardless.

The old mer swallowed his mouthful of stringy scrib. Let her chase him. Let her measure herself against an old fat-smith. He scrambled up the hillside, using his spear for purchase. He straightened up against the sky, looking down at the figure making its way down the slope opposite. Surely she had seen him, silhouetted as he was. But how could he be sure? She was so young; perhaps she had not learned vigilance, yet. And suddenly, without intending it, a cry broke forth from his throat onto the cold air.

“Yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!”

The high, pure tones of the falsetto he had not known he possessed burst forth from the chandler’s rocky vocal cords in a piercing, ululating cry across the hills. The sound echoed from the earth. His spear was thrust high in the air; he did not remember making the gesture.

Yahad had frozen on the valley floor. Maissel ground the butt of his spear into the dirt and clung to the shaft, bizarrely giddy. He stared down at the pale armored figure and its bright hair, hardly believing what he had just done. The sound had simply – welled up out of him, irrepressibly natural. He had never done such a thing. He stared, for one long moment, and then swung abruptly around and took off down into the rolling hills toward the next ridge.

He was running again, but this time was different; this time, he was in a race. This was his chance to prove himself one on one against the youngest and fittest of the Zainab. So he ran, over the mats of dead wickwheat where the wetlands sang in spring and things clicked and whirred and slithered beneath the cover as he flashed past, up the rocky slope at the other side, using spear and sapling to pull himself up faster, Yahad at his back and streaking full out across the wilds to catch him, the ferocious determination that was the core of her evident in her every lunging stride. But he had the advantage; he had no armor to weigh him down. Chitin was light, the best protection for the traveler, scout, or hunter, but still, it hindered swift movement. She chased him, her tight, long legged body bent forward in furious focus, but her gains – if they existed – were so miniscule as to be negligible; Maissel remained a constant fifteen to twenty minutes ahead of her. They ran south, out of the high, rougher ridges and into the gentler slopes leading down to the ancient Dunmer stronghold near the edge of Molag Amur. The sun was in Maissel’s eyes, fierce and streaked with scarlet; the shadow of Red Mountain crept over the grazelands, massive and indomitable; his mouth was dry and his hip twinged with each long step, but, by the ancestors, he was doing it!

And then the black stoned mountains reared up close on his right, slab sided and jagged, and before him the pass yawned, narrow, ash paved, walled by volcanic grey stone chiseled into sheets and spires by wind and rain. Huge boulders balanced precariously on each of the pass’s walls; a single tremor would be enough to seal off this pass, at least, for good. He unhooked the waterskin from his belt and squeezed a short squirt of the ochre liquid into his mouth. His face was chilled with drying sweat.

Footsteps scuffed behind him, slowing to a walk. He turned away from the grim road ahead, holding back a wry, self-satisfied grin behind a stern stare.

“You are no ordinary fat-smith,” the girl stated flatly. Her thin face was flushed violet, and shiny with sweat, her red hair plastered to her skull - but she was barely winded.

Maissel shrugged, seating himself on a slab of grey streaked stone as Yahad crossed her armored arms of her chitin molded briasts. “Perhaps not, girl,” he said. “But you have no other to judge.”

“How did you learn to survive in the Grazelands?” she asked, tone still flat, but her features softening.

The chandler grunted a laugh. “The mer I thought was my father, strangely enough,” he grated. “There is no chance that he was secretly an Ashlander, though. There just is not as much blood-bound difference between Ashlanders and villagers as your Ashkhan seems to think. My – the family I thought I was part of has been travelling the Grazelands without the notice of the Zainab for at least three generations.”

“I just can’t believe it!” Yahad burst out, suddenly vehement as she moved to lean against a spire of stone. “You let us lead you on strings for an entire day, then vanish the next and lead me on a race through the wilderness! What are you, fat-smith? Why didn’t you just tell us you could handle real travel?”

“You would not have believed,” growled Maissel. “Or if you did, and I proved it, it could not have broken your shell. I mean to be a part of the Zainab, Yahad, not some half accepted fringe-freak. I needed a way to get through to you. I needed a way to show you how very wrong about me you were. I needed to shock you.”

The girl shook her head incredulously. “Well you did that, chandler. You did that. Oh, I can’t wait to see their faces,” she exclaimed suddenly, slapping the hard belly of her cuirass with her gauntlet and grinning broadly. “But in the meantime… you have some scrib jerky, don’t you? Toss me some; I had no chance to stop for a meal for keeping up with you, old mer.”

Maissel scrounged a few pieces of scrib jerky from his belt pouch and threw them over to the sharp chinned girl. She nodded to him and set to chewing, lean body leaning against the grey stone spire. They waited there, where the Ashlands breathed on the Grazelands, as the sun slipped low and the frost-cool shadow Red Mountain engulfed eastern Vvardenfell in its futile stretch toward the purpling horizon. The two gulakhans came trudging out of the hills, clamp-browed and discouraged as dusk loomed behind them. They saw Yahad first; her armor was still visible in the fading light.

“No luck?” growled Derch as the two approached. “Us neither. I guess we will just have to deal with Maela’s anger.”

“Not at all,” replied Yahad, smirking. “Maissel is right here.”

The chandler nodded from his rock to the startled mer. Derch stepped closer to Yahad, grating lowly. “You were supposed to give out a call when you found him. We searched all day!”

“I would have given a call, muscles,” she shot back, “if I hadn’t been chasing him across the hills. He kept ahead of me for a good three hours this afternoon. Led me here.”

Derch went still. His wide head turned slowly to stare at the chandler, mild and thin and quiet on his rock.

“You found your way here – alone?” he asked. His brow contorted in bewilderment.

“Of course not,” answered Maissel. “You showed me the way.”

“But – I didn’t!” he stuttered.

The chandler shook his head. “You pointed it out, didn’t you? That was all I needed.”

The beefy mer stared at him for a long second, his square forehead line with confusion and his full lips parted like a child’s in wonder. Then a slow grin spread to each side of his wide jaw.

“You,” he said, shaking a finger, “are a very tricksome mer. On your feet. Let’s make up some time, now that we know you can.”

Things eased considerably, after that. Oh, there were traces of resentment – the Ashlanders had, after all, been humiliated by a mer more than a century their elder – but they were intrasocietal disgruntlements, not inter; they had accepted him, somewhat, and so his tricks fell under the banner of normal, condoned Velothi mischief. Their reticent silence was banished; they spoke freely as they strode south along the smooth surface of the unnamed foyada in the dark, joking and poking rough fun and laughing at themselves. Their voices echoed between the high canyon walls, rebounding from the enormity of Red Mountain on their right. Their footsteps both clattered and scuffed, for in places the solid magma flow had sunken or been covered over by a thin layer of drifted andisol. Seconda rode high in the velvety sky, but only a strip of its silver sliver was visible between the canyon walls, only part clear to gleam softly down on the striated spires of wind carved stone lining their path like the teeth of an eel; to pale the red, brown, and grey leaf blades of the scathecraw and other indomitable grasses that clung to the strips of grey soil; to cool the petals of the scarlet fire ferns shrouding the billows of sulfur belching steam vents; and to wreathe with luminescence the carapaces of the scuttling night scribs that fled the travelers and thorax-thumped the ground in resounding warning.

They made camp on a ledge at the southern terminus of the canyon, at the base of the switchbacked trail that led up to the Howling Door. Long dead trees surrounded the place, jutting out from between the stones, their branches dry and light and much-broken, long used as fire wood by generations of Zainab pilgrims. They seated themselves tight around their tiny fire, in its warmth and light, and shared out more scrib jerky and mineral reminiscent water, and Yahad entertained them again in retelling her race with the fat-smith (“I saw him take off, and I said to myself, ‘Self, you’ve got a chandler to catch!’”) and Maissel too volunteered a few tales, of close calls and narrow evasions of Ashlanders and beasts in the Grazelands, tales of harsh winters and glorious summers from before his listeners had squealed their first squawk, of winds saturated with ash and soothed by rain, of dreugh hunting and Hlaalu baiting and the foolish strider-wrangling of his youth. And by the time the flames had settled to pulsing coals between them, he had convinced three more Zainab that he was not so different as they had thought.

Kanly shook his stubbled chin wonderingly, prominent mouth grinning as he stared down into the ashes. “I suppose you really are old Kaushad’s son, after all.”

“I don’t know about that,” grunted Derch, “since you haven’t mentioned any conquests of womer – perhaps you were just sparing Yahad, here –“

“Talk of conquests doesn’t bother me, Derch-nugget,” Yahad interjected matter-of-factly. “I’m a conquering kind of girl myself.”

“- but you are certainly bold enough to be the grandson of Uroshnor,” he finished, ignoring her.

Maissel shrugged. “Perhaps. I have little experience in battle, whatever else I have done. But I am curious, you three,” he went on, leaning his back on a rock, broad hands laced over his comfortably snug vest. “Everyone talks about Kaushad and Uroshnor like they were the embodiments of Boethiah. What did they do to become so famed?”

“What didn’t they do?” laughed Yahad. “If you listen to the stories, there’s not much the father or the son didn’t cover, one or the other.”

“The stories may be exaggerated,” agreed Derch gravely, “but nevertheless, they were great mer; brave, bold, true to their people and to our ways.”

“Uroshnor was known for his daring,” Kanly put in. “He led our people in many raids and brave battles. It is said that he had no feat, not even in the face of sorcery. He went alone into the Dwemer ruins in the north, simply to prove himself.”

“But don’t forget the fungal frenzy,” said Yahad. “When he led a party across the bay to the Tower of Fear, felled its mushroom spine and then rode the head of it like a boat back across the waves.”

Kanly and Derch growled laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous, girl,” chuckled Derch, “he couldn’t have chopped down that tower! The Telvanni still lives there! At most, he severed a nodule.”
“He cut off a piece of a Telvanni tower?” Maissel choked.

Derch nodded. “Indeed he did, and this we know for sure, for the Ashkhan still has the shield the Zainab made from the wood.”

The chandler grunted, impressed, as he stared into the flames. That was no small feat, attacking the tower of an immortal wizard. “But what of Kaushad?” he spoke up after a minute or so in subside silence. “What do you remember him for – aside from his… fecundity.”

“That’s most of what we remember him for,” laughed Derch grimly. “But he, too, was a brave and powerful leader. He championed the Zainab in many battles.”

“Then why does that not define his memory?”

The beefy mer sighed, and his wide face grew serious. “Because his fertility was of more importance,” he grated slowly. “You would not know it, fat-smith, despite your age, but the Zainab are not what we once were. We have dwindled, through the centuries. It began in the later years of Uroshnor’s leadership, if I remember the Wise Woman’s fire tales correctly. The Zainab, under his rule, had roamed these lands and the islands of the bay without fear for many years; we were strong, and numerous, and perhaps too proud in our power. The Ahemmusa had always feared us, run from us, it is said – but one day, they did not. They rose up from the waves one night, when the Zainab camped on the heights above your village, and with vengeance in their hearts and salt in their mouths, the Ahemmusa brought the battle to us. And Uroshnor was slain by an unblooded youth, and the hard times began for our people.”

He frowned down at the coals. “They turned the tide by rising from it. This is why we call them the Salt-Mouth Velothi, and why they love the sea so. We have never been able to recover from that one loss, so long ago. They hunted us, though we retreated into the hills, they killed our guar and our womer, and we dwindled. We fought well, and bravely, and your father stemmed the flow of blood for a time, but in the end it was not enough; we came to what we are now – a weak shadow of our history.”

“This is why we praise your father as Kaushad Fruitful [censored], Maissel. He gave us sons, and daughters, in numbers nearly unprecedented at a time when what we needed most was more able bodies. All but two were slain in their youth, but that was not their father’s fault.”

“Perhaps that is why we remember Kaushad and Uroshnor with such honor,” mused Yahad. “For they were our last truly great Ashkhans, the ones who led us when we still had strength and respect.” Derch and Kanly nodded in silent agreement, and the four stared in solemn silence down at the dark remnants of flame, brooding in the gloom.

At length, Kanly’s quiet voice spoke softly out of the dark. “Weakened the Zainab may be,” he said, “but defeated we are not. The Wise Woman says you can help us back to strength, fat-smith. I don’t know if she is right, but I’m willing to let you try. So you’d best get some sleep. We’ll take the watch; you must be prepared for your trial. You go to meet the ancestors on the morn.”

Maissel nodded silently, and the four of them vanished to unroll their respective bed rolls on the smooth faced shale ledge. And Maissel lay staring up at the stone of the wall and the depths of the sky on which it abutted, warm with his victories, cold with the winter air in his lungs and the next day’s stomach roiling prospects, nostrils pumping chilled mist with each breath, muscles loose and comfortably sore from the day’s exertions, and tense with anticipation of the day to come. He had won a victory, this day; he had proven himself to three of the Zainab, and won a measure of their respect. But the true proving was still to come.

The wind gusted, and an eerie howl drifted down from far above.

An interesting looking story, my friend. I love anything to do with the Tribunal, and from what I've seen this should not disappoint. I'll have to read it as soon as I have the time.

One thing I believe is worth mentioning, however: few people like to see every single chapter up before they have a chance to read the first. I know you want to put them all out there so people can go from one to the next, but it really does scare some readers away on forums like this. It's usually easier to put one up at a time, with a few days in between, to give people a chance to read and comment. Few people want to read the whole thing in one sitting, but a single chapter is relatively easy, especially with a story like this. It's completely up to you, of course; just trying to help.

Hope you like it!

So, if you check the dates, you'll see that the prologue was posted on the 4th of January. I've been putting them up bit by bit, as I write the stuff. Are you suggesting I use different threads for each chapter, or something?