LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 1

      They were men of hard faces and few words who made their way through the pickwood bushes shaded by some elder trees. Shepherds visited these copses now and again when bad weather was brewing or the opportunity arose to pick a few berries. Not that a handful of berries could fill you up, but in a land where every bite was hard to come by, anything that brought a little sweetness to the day was a treasure.

      Later they said that magical powers had led the Ramsmen to this place, and many believed this to be the truth. It is entirely possible, though, that it was nothing but a lucky stroke of fate that they were around this very day: once the grass was grazed, the herds were always moved to a different place, and no one but the Ramsmen themselves knew the routes and the sequence in which the different pastures were visited.

      A boy was wandering about the bushes, stopping here and there as if he listened to a quiet voice, and did not take any notice of the men. Judging by his size he could hardly be more than four harvests old. His weatherproof travel garb was stretched tightly over several layers of underclothes so that he appeared to be slightly chubby. The clothing showed scratches and odd discolouring, and seemed to have gone through some stress, but it was not in need of repair, and hardly dirty. The leather was smooth and of a quality rarely found even in this part of the land, which had a long tradition in the tanning of hides. On the leathery chest, barely hidden by two small hands, rested a mighty amulet whose band had gotten caught somewhere between neck and collar.

      Roddick was the eldest of the Ramsmen. It was he whom the eyes of the men sought when the group faced a decision, and he who spoke the first word. Roddick crouched down before the child and looked at the amulet. All he saw was a simple wooden disk, thicker in the middle and covered all over with fine carvings. Although the child had apparently sucked on the wood for a while, he could see no traces of wear, save for a few spit stains. Whatever wood this was, it must be very hard. And it did not come from around here.

      The Ramsmen were people of the land. Roddick, who knew every plant and every animal in the area, weighed the wood gently in his hand. It was too heavy for its size, the tint unfamiliar and the grain foreign. His gaze did not find the familiar rings of a transversely cut piece of wood. Instead, it followed beautiful swirls that wound around several eyes of rest. The carvings were rich, if simple, but not of the kind made by people sitting by the fire in the evening when the day’s work was done. Nearly all Ramsmen wore a pendant around the neck, and Roddick himself did too. He had cut his from the heel bone of a Mulch, the first beast he had slain by himself. He called it his amulet, even believed a little in his talisman. But it was by no means a real amulet. To create a real amulet, one needed magical powers. Only the village’s Reeve owned a true amulet and openly wore it upon his jerkin as a sign of his powers. He who owned an amulet was of high standing and destined to rule over the people. Always it was a master of magic, though he would rarely have to prove his powers. Perhaps even Esara, who was known to have mysterious powers, called an amulet her own. But if she did, she kept it secret, like she did so many other things.

      Even more puzzling than the disk itself was the woven band it hung from. Roddick could make out eight carefully greased cords, braided in a complicated pattern to form a skein. They ended in a star-shaped knot in front of the wood, their soft points reaching over the upper edge like a protective hand. Roddick had heard of the skilful way the Water-Men artfully knotted string into figurines. He had never seen any such thing, though, nor did he understand the reason behind it. Art, however, does not develop without purpose, even if that purpose takes time to become apparent. The knot looked like an open blossom with eight curved petals encompassing a small, hemispherical butte.

      Roddick lifted the knot’s star-shaped petals a little and discovered beneath a single, almost invisible string that ran from the butte into the wooden disk. It looked as though one could tear the wood with one sharp pull from its band. He carefully tugged at the string to test its resilience. It moved a little and cut into the skin of his fingertips. Roddick understood neither the wood nor the band, and neither had he ever seen a plant which, when spun into a thread, produced an unbreakable string. In his hands lay something that was not of his world.

      He took the wooden disc gently from the boy’s hands and hid it under the child’s shirt. Finding a child in the wilderness was unusual enough and would cause a lot of excitement in the village. Roddick saw no reason to fan the flames with the mystery of a strange amulet. The Ramsmen followed Roddick because he knew what to do, and his wise words could convince even those in doubt and those who wavered. But now, the leader of the Ramsmen made sure not to let even one word slip. Sometimes, the most important things in life were better left unnoticed.

      The men who had found the boy were no men of big words, and they brought the child into their village. He did not resist. Only his gaze seemed to be tethered to a point somewhere in the far distance.

      There was a saying in Earthland that rumors were the only thing faster than the wind, and so the men were not surprised to find that they were already expected when they returned home. The last light of the evening sun shone upon their families, who had gathered in small groups in front of their houses and watched them arrive. The wind had abated and readied itself, like every evening, to blow back down from the hills to the valley from which it had risen during the day.

      Roddick let the boy ride on his shoulders and walked down the wide, heavily trodden path that led to the center of the village and connected the well with the village square. The villagers stepped out from the shadows of their huts and followed Roddick and his Ramsmen on their way to the Judgment Tree, where the other half of the village population had already assembled under the lead of the Reeve.

      Roddick walked slowly towards the great tree whose massive outer branches were so heavy they had come to rest on the ground. The cattle

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