The Blessing of Krozem



  THE BLESSING OF KROZEM

  by

  LORINDA J. TAYLOR

  This is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover illustration by the author.

  Copyright © 2013 by Lorinda J. Taylor

  The Blessing of Krozem

  It was during the Sixth Era of Ziraf’s world – the Era of Tongues, when humankind first learned how to speak – that it occurred to the Headman of Greivat Fastness that he was getting old. He stood on the bank of the Mistgel, which terraced the mountainside before it pooled at the feet of the fastness, and spoke with the Troi who lived in that stream, Wagmi of the weedy eyebrows.

  At one point there was a long silence, until Emtash-ka-Zidzod said, loudly and testily, “What are you trying to say? You fool Troi, if you don’t push breath out of those gills, I can’t hear you!”

  Wagmi shifted on his knob of rock in the middle of the stream, letting his hands, which were appended to weed-brown limbs as long as his legs, trail in the water. Any part of him that was in the water, which included most of his legs, disappeared in wavy, luminescent patterns. “I don’t have gills – that’s a mouth,” he said. “And if you humans hadn’t invented tongues, you wouldn’t have any trouble understanding me. Your ancestors never did. You’ve lost control over the spirit in yourselves. You are all lips and wind these days.”

  Emtash brushed aside these accusations, massaging the back of his wrinkled neck with slate-gray fingers. His skin was all slate-gray, except an area over cheekbones and nose where a blue flush of youth still came and went. His own silver-blue eyes stared into the rock-brown, pooling eyes of the Troi.

  “Part of the difficulty,” said Emtash, “is just what you said. You were here when my ancestors were. I wasn’t. Things change for humans. They don’t for Troil.”

  “Of course not. There isn’t a material bone in our bodies.” Wagmi gave a rare, wide-mouth grin, displaying the toothless nothingness inside his head. “It’s simply easier for spirit beings to communicate without all that buzzing of flesh. The Kairam are forgetting how to do it.”

  Emtash looked sour, yanking on a strand of blue-black beard. “I’ll never understand why the Zem’l made Troil to live forever and gave humans nothing but a hundred and fifty years.”

  The weed-fringes above the Troi’s eyes shot up, precipitating a shower of droplets into the air. “A hundred and fifty? I thought a hundred and twenty was a ripe old age for a human.”

  “Well, it is. But I’ve heard of a hundred and fifty.”

  “So that’s what’s bothering you. You’re feeling your age.”

  Emtash sighed, using his staff to prod a clump of green-starred ferns near the root of an ancient conifer. “I’m ninety-five. I like my grandchildren. I’d like to live a long time. Why do you suppose Ziraf allowed the Zem’l to botch the world so badly?”

  “By making the Troil immortal and the rest of the world not?” Wagmi threw up splayed hands, kicking his legs until the water churned into a mist around him. Out of the sun-glinted spray he burbled, “Spite! Spite! For shame!”

  “Nonsense!” retorted Emtash. “I’d just like to know why the Zem’l couldn’t at least have allowed us as long – as long as this tree here. It was already old when I was a boy and it’s still flourishing.”

  Wagmi’s head was materializing amid the cloud of droplets. “Why don’t you ask one of the Zem’l?”

  Emtash’s jaw dropped. “Summon a Zem?”

  “Why not? They used to come around a lot. That’s another thing that the creation of humans spoiled. Ziraf’s Dreamers shun the world these days.”

  Emtash ignored the insult, or failed to hear it in the captivating novelty of the idea. “I don’t know how to summon a Zem.”

  “Can’t your priests in those little round houses down there do anything except put out curds for us Troil, who don’t eat?”

  “They do much more than that,” retorted Emtash, “but I’ve never known one to summon a Zem.”

  “Go down to the lake. The priests on Tin-Arul Island must be good for something besides brewing fern tea and exorcising Troil who don’t do a snail’s worth of harm.”

  “A snail’s worth!” But Emtash again waved aside Wagmi’s hectoring. “You think the Zem’l come there?”

  “Of course they come there! The Kairam were created on High Crown Island! Use your mind, friend man! – if there is any spirit left in it that hasn’t blown away on words!” And with a burst of froth the Troi kicked hmself heels-over-head backward and disappeared.

  * * *

  Emtash thought as he descended the mountainside, he thought as he passed the round-capped huts of his priests, and he was still thinking as he entered the walled garth of Greivat Fastness. The svina vines over the dead pines at the south end were covered with masses of gold-green blooms, and tiny dust birds fed on the nectar as half-naked children chased one another in the shadows beneath the tangle. Emtash shaded his eyes to peer east, into the cloudless setting sun. It was high summer, and warm even in the mountains of the Crown, the highest of all mountains. He mopped his neck and went to pour a bucket of water over his head before dinner.

  By the time he entered the hall, he had finished thinking. “You’re late,” said Zidzod-koi-Emtash accusingly as he sat down beside her on the floor of the dais.

  “Late! The hall is hardly half full!” He surveyed the length of the oblong room, with its walls of irregular dark blocks, its cold fire trench, the holes in the walls where stones had been pushed out to admit summer warmth and light. People, slate blue, with straight, blue-black hair and stocky, nimble bodies, were congregated in deceptively casual order up and down the hall, the eldest closest to the dais, the grandchildren and their children at the far end. The young ones were so tenderly blue that they glowed in the sun like sapphires.

  Entash gave a growl of regret, looking at Zidzod’s drab gray hands as she poured pine beer out of a stoneware jug.

  “Have you been wasting your time with that Troi up in the Mistgel again?” she said.

  “It’s not wasting time, woman. He gave me an idea.”

  Her glance was furtive but sharp. “It always worries me when you talk to that Troi.”

  At that moment Emtash’s sister Verkoi, oldest blood member of the fastness after Emtash and so next in line to become its head, joined them on the dais and began to chatter with Zidzod. Emtash watched the hall fill up with five of his seven children and their offspring, with his dead brother’s four, his sister’s two, his uncle’s two grandsons. His father and uncle had founded Greivat Fastness 150 years ago after their own fastness on the other side of the Blackbone had been cursed by plague and no one who survived had wanted to stay there. Now Greivat had nearly a hundred people – not a large settlement, but he liked it that way. It felt like a family, the way a fastness was supposed to feel. He looked at his youngest daughter as she went up and down the rows dishing up boiled mutton. She had been born like an afterthought, twenty years ago. In a couple of years she would come to marriageable age. With a sudden clutch of feeling he hoped her husband would want to live in Greivat Fastness – it wasn’t fair to lose his sky blossom to another hold. He hoped he would live long enough to see her with a husband.

  He turned abruptly to Zidzod. “Your nose,” he said, “is beginning to fall.”

  Startled, Zidzod put both hands over the mid
point of her face, as if to catch the errant appendage.

  “What a thing to say!” cried Emtash’s sister.

  “I have an idea,” said the Headman persistently.

  “I heard you,” said his wife, hiding the offending member in her beer bowl, “the first time.”

  “You and I are going up to High Crown Island, to ask the Zem’l to make us live longer.”

  “What?” squeaked Verkoi, while Zidzod’s silver eyes opened until the thin blue slivers around the pupils widened.

  “Is that the idea Wagmi put in your head?” she cried.

  “Why shouldn’t we? Are you in a hurry to leave all this?” He swept his arm over the hall. “You’re not so young any longer, either, Zid.”

  “What presumption!” cried Verkoi. “Why, Harzem will seal you up in a rock for daring to presume such a thing!”

  “Why in Ziraf’s name would I ask the Zem of Darkness?” he exploded.

  “He is the one who controls death!”

  “Oh, well … “ Emtash deflated a little. “The priests will know which ones to ask. That isn’t the point. The point is – the Zem’l have never explained why humans were made mortal when the Troil weren’t. I can’t see any good reason why we have to be mortal.”

  “How would you know anything about reasons?” retorted Verkoi. “What do you know anything about, except hunting horol and planting chachab roots and putting back stones that fall off walls?”

  “Are you suggesting I’m stupid?” rumbled Emtash.

  “And selfish, too,” said Verkoi, a little catch in her voice. “You’re going to ask for immortality only for Zid and yourself?”

  He was silent, scowling at the empty bowl before his crossed knees. “Maybe I dare to do that. Maybe I don’t dare to ask for everyone. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t dare to ask at all.” He stole a look at Zidzod.

  She was pensively rubbing the bridge of her rather thin nose, and she met his eyes almost diffidently. “It could be that it’s falling,” she said. Then, “It’s not such a terrible idea, Emtash. We haven’t been over to Tin-Arul for years. I wonder if the priests will laugh at us.”

  A grin broadened on his face and he turned triumphantly to his sister. But she looked so plaintive that he sobered.

  “Won’t you ask for me, too? I don’t want to leave this, either, Emtash.”

  “All right. All right, for you. But I can’t ask for everybody, Verk. It would be – be really too presumptuous. So don’t tell anyone about what we’re doing until we come back.”

  “I hope you come back,” she said, and she bent quickly over her bowl as her sweet-voiced, blue-flushing niece knelt to fill it for her.

  * * *

  Tin-Arul Island rose into a lofty peak at its center. If one pivoted on that vantage point, one could see nothing but even higher mountains. East, south, west, north lay the Arul – the slaty mountains of the Crown – holding in a tight oval the lake that absorbed the color of their blue-black cleavages. Many streams fed that lake, which at a southeast point drained into the Cutrock Gorge. It was said that the mountains containing the lake were the points on the crown of a sleeping giant, while the lake was the silver matrix of the Crown. The peak in the middle of the island was the top of the giant’s head, from which it got its name, Ora Vakana.

  At the lake’s north end rose Zhinthá – the glacier-seamed Starbell – the highest mountain in Ziraf’s world and the richest jewel in the Crown.

  On this warm summer day an old man stood shivering on the highest point of Ora Vakana, bent over a staff, his twisted hands clutching at the knobbed head as one lame leg faltered beneath him. His faded gray face was as seamed as the mountains around him; his eyelids dragged low to hood eyes that nevertheless were still vital, glinting more blue than silver. Those eyes were turned northward, past the low circle of storm-blasted stones where the Zem’l were wont to appear, toward the gleaming, complex heights of the Starbell. He had always meant to climb the Starbell. Now, each morning when he rose, he doubted that his legs could any longer bear him even to the top of the Giant’s Head.

  Shivering harder, he gathered his woolen priest’s robe closer around him. It was summer, but he was cold. In two moon-weeks – thirty days – it would be autumn. In another sixty, winter. The seasons were brief but passionate in Ziraf’s world. He did not know if he could face another winter. And Javon – Javon might not live to see the end of summer.

  Abrupt thoughts scoring his mind, he turned for one last look at Zhinthá before he began the painful descent to the garth halfway down the mountainside. What point was there to his life? He had done nothing – finished nothing. Two hundred ninety-seven years ago the priests of High Crown had begun to count years. Every year at the end of winter, in a colony on the other end of the island, a stone was placed in a grooved trough of moonwood. He had joined the ritual there when he was 35 years old, guarding the stones and worshiping Nírazem the Motion-Dreamer. He had married a beautiful woman, sired four offspring; he had some power to call the Zem’l, to affect the perception of men’s minds. But his children were dead, his wife lay withering in their hut, the Zem’l were no longer consulted much, and illusion was empty. When a man learned one thing, a thousand other unknown things crowded around to taunt his erudition. There were a thousand mountains, and he had not even climbed the Starbell …

  “Gilzara! There you are!”

  Hiding his dismay, he stopped his halting descent of the path to confront Tiloi his serving woman. “What is it? Javon … ”

  “No, Gilzara,” she said softly. “A man and woman have come to consult you. Svantov on the shore sent them up.”

  “Why?” he said, beginning to descend again.

  “They want to summon a Zem. She told them no priest could call them more easily than the Shrine-Guardian.”

  His mouth twisted in harsh irony. “Svantov is right.”

  They came into the low-walled oval, with seven round-topped stone huts. Most had fallen into disrepair; the shrine had once demanded a guardian for each of the Zem’l, but of late two had seemed enough for all of them. Soon there would be only one …

  Gilzara saw two people sitting on stones in the middle of the yard, the man looking unnaturally subdued, the woman openly fearful. They got hastily to their feet when they saw the old priest approaching.

  “I am Gilzara-ka-Javon,” he said, fighting his shortness of breath. “How may I serve you?”

  “I am Emtash-ka-Zidzod,” said the man, who was something beyond middle life in age. “I am Headman of Greivat Fastness.” He could not keep comfortable pride out of his voice. “This is Zidzod, my wife.”

  Gilzara nodded indifferently. “Sit down. I’ll join you, if you permit it. I am an old man who can no longer make a middling climb without needing rest.”

  He saw the couple glance expectantly at each other and Zidzod exclaimed, “Oh, I’m sure, Lord Priest, that you will understand.”

  Gilzara pressed a hand to his midriff as his breath stabbed him. “What request have you?”

  “You see, Lord Gilzara,” began Emtash, “I was having this talk with a Troi – Wagmi, of the Mistgel – that’s a small river that runs past my fastness and down into the lake. Do you know where it is, Lord? We get our water from … ” He stopped as Zidzod poked him with her elbow. Gilzara permitted himself a dour smile, agreeing with her assessment of her husband’s loquacity.

  “And it made me wonder,” recommenced Emtash, “why the Zem’l created the Troil to live forever and yet made humans mortal.’

  “But that is easy enough to explain,” replied Gilzara with a listless tonelessness. “The Troil are pure spirit and so are part of Ziraf’s endless, most essential dreaming, whereas humans take only a part of their nature from spirit. The rest is of grosser matter – stone, earth, water, light, all of which, even light itself, are subject to change – to decay, to darkness – to death.” His voice had shifted at the
end, deepened into a queer mourning.

  Emtash was shaking his head. “Wagmi said something like that. But what I wonder is this: The Zem’l can do anything they like, can’t they? And they’ve been known to do strange things when requested. What if one asked them for a longer life? Is there any chance they might grant it?”

  Shocked into attentiveness, Gilzara stared at his questioner from under drawn brows. “What? Ask the Zem’l to alter their own laws? For whom? For yourselves?” A laugh shuddered out of him. “How old are you?”

  A little taken aback, Emtash said defensively, “Well, I’m 95 and Zidzod is 93. I know that isn’t the oldest of the old, but it isn’t young, either. Look how her nose is falling.” He stopped. Gilzara had heaved himself to his feet and turned away.

  Then he turned back again. “Look at me,” he hissed. “I am 123.”

  After a moment, Zidzod whispered, “All the more reason you can understand why we might wish for long life.”

  “And restored youth, I take it,” Gilzara replied witheringly.

  Emtash cleared his throat, beginning to be embarrassed. “Well, that would be nice. We have many grandchildren, you see, in the fastness … ”

  “And a little girl of our own,” interrupted Zidzod with an eager smile, “who hasn’t yet made her koleina. We would so like to see them all grow up.”

  “And my sister, too, who is three years younger than I – she made me promise to ask for her. But no one else, Lord Priest. We wouldn’t want to presume … ”

  “Do you know which Zem to call, Lord Gilzara? Because we didn’t. We thought it might make Harzem angry … ”

  As their voices drifted on, Gilzara stood gripped in an unanticipated struggle, as if fighting a hard wind that had opened a rift to the sun in a very black cloud around him.

  Ask the Zem’l for long life. Ask the Zem’l for – immortality …

  For all his life he had striven to understand what made the world of Ziraf as it was, and for all his life that knowledge had eluded him. Never once had he asked the Zem’l for anything, using instead the gifts of Krozem that set humans superior to the animals, superior even to the Troil. But those gifts had not been enough; time had defeated them and left him in Harzem’s grip without even one hundredth part of all the potential in him fully realized.