Chapter 24: Desert democracy

Wirrin could have smelled out the healers’ wagon, if she’d needed to. There was a light breeze that wasn’t enough to get through the half-circle of carts and wagons, and certainly wasn’t enough to disperse the smell. As Yern dragged her back into the half-circle, the smells of myrrh, frankincense, dates, and alcohol was so strong as to be nearly overwhelming.

The healers’ wagon was one of the bigger wagons in the camp, a wooden house on wheels raised high off the ground. The huge yoke on the front was certainly for an elephant, and a long, shallow ramp led up to a door at the back.

Wirrin likely could have tracked down the meeting by sound, too. The camp was largely quiet, except for the odd sounds of babies waking or going to sleep. Eavesdropping on the meeting would not have been hard. A loud, male voice carried through a good chunk of the half-circle of carts and wagons.

‘Kot tholtya Thaulgtok?’ that male voice was demanding. ‘Kot vik ekog Thaulgtok hetsh? Goltok vosht vik ekog Thaulgtok hetsh.’

A much quieter, woman’s voice said something. She sounded tired.

‘That’s Herdok and Osga,’ Yern whispered. ‘Saush is the sensible one.’

‘Goshogoll goltok? Thaulgtok ektvik vosgok hoget faufautya,’ Herdok proclaimed.

‘He’s stuck in a loop, we should interrupt,’ Yern whispered, dragging Wirrin toward the ramp.

‘But if we tell them, Herdok will win the argument,’ Wirrin whispered back.

Yern stopped dead. She stared at Wirrin for several seconds. ‘No helping it, sadly.’

A different woman’s voice, slow and precise, just loud enough to be heard from the bottom of the ramp. ‘Goltok vosgok vik voshavat tholgtok. Goltok ekikt vosovt ausholktok.’

Before anything else could be said, Yern let go of Wirrin’s hand and sprinted up the ramp to bang on the door. Wirrin had to agree with Yern’s decision, but she wasn’t going to run up the ramp.

‘Vos’hetshya,’ Osga said.

Wirrin made it to the top of the ramp behind Yern, who was bouncing from foot to foot, by the time the door opened. That smell of myrrh and frankincense billowed out of the wagon, clogging Wirrin’s eyes and nose and mouth.

The woman who had opened the door was probably the same height as Wirrin, and probably about ten years older. She had a severe look, with her hair shaved close to her scalp and very dark eyes. She was skinny, her plain kaftan hung loosely around her. The wavy scars around her eyes had been made shapes like bigger eyes, and the scars on her hands gave the odd impression of too many bones.

‘Yern,’ Osga said. ‘Goltok takyavt.’

‘Olg gat Wirrin,’ Yern said, gesturing behind her. ‘Olg ekt takholgok.’

Osga looked at Wirrin, then back at Yern. ‘Takholgok?’

Yern nodded, quite a lot. ‘Pautya. Olg ekt takholgok.’

Osga sighed, and finished opening the door so that she could extend her left palm out to Wirrin. ‘Wirrin, is it? Yern here says you have important information.’

Wirrin put her left palm on Osga’s. ‘I think that’s up to you to decide.’

Osga nodded and waved them in. Past the entryway was a large room stacked with thin mattresses, a small table, and the two other participants in the argument. The smell only got stronger.

Herdok was older than Wirrin had expected, his long, corkscrew curls were white, the scars on his face were faded into the wrinkles. He was sat on a cushion, watching Yern with delight and Wirrin with interest.

Saush was likely the youngest of the three, probably about the same age as Wirrin. She was sat in a cushioned, padded chair. Her mouth hung open slightly on the right, where a pattern of scars resembled a beak. Her left arm ended just beyond the elbow in a little thumb, and her right had only three fingers. Her legs were bowed, small feet sitting on rests on the front of the wheeled chair. The majority of her scarification, where it deviated from the norm, drew attention to her physical differences.

‘Olg gat Wirrin,’ Yern said.

‘Yern promises she has important information to tell us.’ Osga sounded tired, but not dubious.

From his cushion on the floor, Herdok offered his left hand. ‘Og eshk Herdok.’

Wirrin put her left hand on his.

Saush offered her right hand. ‘Og eshk Saush,’ she said. ‘Vos vostakfautya.’

Wirrin put her left hand on hers. ‘Og ishoget vos vostakfautya.’

Saush pressed her lips together. ‘You can just so ishoget, in future.’

Wirrin nodded.

‘Wirrin,’ Osga said. ‘Would you mind telling us what Yern believes is so important?’

Wirrin had to stop herself from defending Yern. Likely Osga would have said ‘Yern holktok vik takholgok’ in Kolgya, which did not have the implied dismissiveness that the translated phrase did.

‘I’ve found…’ Wirrin paused. She’d learned Ulvaer’s name in the desert, but that didn’t mean the people here would know it. ‘Povek Tesholg and Fogolk Teshold,’ she said. ‘And I’m fairly sure I know where Tegalk Tesholg is.’

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Osga got it first, pointing out into the sand. ‘Where the Thaulgtok are?’

Wirrin nodded.

‘You say found?’ Saush mused.

‘I did wake them,’ Wirrin said.

‘Tetholgtok?’ Herdok frowned at her. ‘Og ehstvos’holk…’ Herdok frowned at her a little harder. ‘I didn’t know that was possible.’

‘I don’t know tetholg,’ Wirrin admitted.

‘Mage,’ Mkaer rumbled.

‘Mage,’ Yern blurted, just before Herdok said it.

‘They didn’t either,’ Wirrin said. ‘I expect it has something to do with waking them up.’

‘So the Thaulgtok are here for you?’ Osga frowned.

Wirrin shrugged. ‘It would be quite a coincidence if they weren’t.’

‘Are you a storyteller, Wirrin?’ Saush asked.

Wirrin choked. At least that was a polite way to ask if someone was lying. ‘I am not,’ she said. ‘There are enough interesting things in the world without having to make anything up.’

‘So what do you propose we do with this knowledge?’ Saush asked.

Wirrin shrugged again. ‘I had been hoping to actually find Ulvaer before I talked to anyone about it. I was headed to the hetavatok to talk to some friends about it.’

‘What were you expecting your friends to do with this knowledge?’

Wirrin frowned, what had she been expecting? ‘I suppose I expected them to want to go and find Ulvaer themselves,’ she said. ‘The Church… the Thaulgtok already being here complicates it, though.’

‘You wouldn’t want anything from them, in exchange for telling them? Helping them find Tegalk Tesholg?’

‘I wasn’t going to help them find it,’ Wirrin said. ‘I was just going to keep going. It’s not my business what they want from Ulvaer.’

Saush scrutinised her.

Wirrin tried to scrutinise herself. Though hadn’t she already said it to the Fiends? ‘It seems to me that people will have a better idea what’s good for them than I will,’ she said. ‘My experience so far with the shyolg is that you all seem to have quite a good idea of what’s good for you. I don’t need to tell people what to do, just seek avenues for change.’

‘Directionless change?’ Osga asked.

‘I don’t think you’re directionless,’ Wirrin said.

‘If your experience had been different? If we, the shyolg, were different?’ Osga asked.

Wirrin shrugged. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t bother telling you. As it is, I’m telling you.’

‘Only certain people know what’s good for them, then?’ Herdok grinned.

‘That has been my experience, yes,’ Wirrin said.

‘It has been my experience as well,’ Herdok said, looking at Saush. ‘I met many who worshipped the Thausholg, in my travels outside the desert.’

‘I like that,’ Mkaer rumbled.

‘I ask out of interest,’ Saush said, looking at Herdok. ‘I have not had the privilege of travel that you have had.’

‘The question remains, Wirrin,’ Osga said. ‘What do you expect us to do with this information?’

Wirrin shrugged. ‘Think about it, I suppose.’ That didn’t feel like enough. ‘I’m going to try to awaken Ulvaer either way. It’s up to you what you do with that information.’

‘Olg vosesh gok pautesk,’ Herdok said. ‘Goltok gok takesk.’

‘Goltok vesh tekhetsh ogoltok,’ Saush said.

Yern nodded seriously.

Herdok nodded seriously in exactly the same manner, a moment later. Saush joined in. Wirrin joined in.

Osga looked around at them all and threw up her hands. ‘Fine.’

It wasn’t hard to gather the camp together, most of them were still lounging around the lake. Parents brought their sleeping children, shepherds brought their flocks. Decisions needed to be made and even if not everyone would participate, it was only fair that everyone be present.

Wirrin was surprised that it took about half an hour of discussion before someone, a young woman who introduced herself as Theka, to pose the question. ‘Vesh goltok holk olg vosfautya?’ It was technically quite a rude question to ask, but it seemed like an obvious one, none the less.

While Osga and Saush jumped to Wirrin’s defence, which was very nice of them, Wirrin thought about it. What was something easy she could do that would demonstrate what she wanted to demonstrate?

Off the edge of the watering hole where they were having this meeting, a sinkhole rapidly formed, sand sliding away into the ground. The water table was close, so it wasn’t too difficult for Wirrin to crack open a small spring to bubble up out of the ground and trickle back into the lake.

She felt sweaty and light-headed for doing it, but the cooking fires were in use again and no one minded her grabbing some food and sitting down to take deep breaths. The meeting took turns meandering over to examine the tiny spring.

The water didn’t last long, but it had the desired effect. People moved on from debating the merits of just doing nothing and letting Wirrin get on with her own life. Which had, admittedly, been the option that Wirrin proposed.

The spring hadn’t yet run dry by the time the meeting was discussing the exact manner in which they would follow Wirrin into the centre of the desert. There was a fairly even split between following her most of the way and letting her try to deal with the Church on her own, and taking up arms against the Thaulgtok.

A couple of people, including Herdok, were suggesting they could go without Wirrin and awaken Ulvaer themselves. Saush was doing an admirable job of talking them down, though. They had spotted at least half a dozen mages in the Church’s little camp, and the seventy-odd members of the clan who could fight probably wouldn’t be enough to deal with that.

Taug even told the story of the five-hundred-year-riots, almost exactly as Wirrin had told it to Yolget, to help strengthen the case against trying to fight the Church themselves.

An older man, younger that Herdok, whose name had drifted out of Wirrin’s head asked the obvious question. ‘If it took twenty thousand people to kill a dozen mages, what hope do the seventy of us have against six?’

Taug frowned, his mouth opened, then closed.

‘It was more like ten thousand, at most,’ Wirrin said, before Taug could come up with an answer. ‘And not everyone actually got involved, once all the killing started.’

‘Still, it must have been more than seventy,’ the man said. ‘Or even a hundred and forty.’

‘Oh, certainly,’ Wirrin said. She remembered screams and shouts. Blinding lights and the smell of roasting meat drifting all the way to her rooftop. People in grey robes moving too fast to see. Climbing, thorny plants breaking through cobblestones. ‘A few hundred, at least.’

Everyone was looking at her. Wirrin shrugged. ‘Patolg,’ she said. ‘Most of them didn’t have weapons.’

Herdok’s eyes glistened very like Hest’s had. ‘They beat the mages to death?’

Wirrin remembered a struggling mass of people, bright flashes of light barely making it past the crush of bodies. Shouting and screaming and burning. A woman with a grey robe and a scarred face, battered and bloody and unmoving on the ground.

‘More knives than swords or bows,’ she said. ‘A lot of the Sovtlan knew how to fight. But there were never that many of them. A lot of drunken brawlers trying to deal with dedicated killers. It took a lot of them to get the job done.’ She shrugged again.

Yern leaned in. ‘What’s Sovtlan?’

‘Singers, I suppose,’ Wirrin said.

‘You think we can’t do better than a bunch of scared, unarmed patolg?’ Herdok asked of the man, who sat back down rather than answer.

It was Herdok and the few others who had wanted to fight for themselves who ended up swaying the meeting toward helping Wirrin to fight the Thaulgtok. It was good enough for them, if they weren’t going to win what they really wanted.

Wirrin spent most of the rest of the meeting explaining about the Sovtlan and the riots to Yern, who was equally more interested in that explanation than the meeting itself.

The final count was sixty three in favour of joining Wirrin in battle against the Thaulgtok to thirty one against, eight abstentions, and a herd of goats who could not be convinced to vote.