The Land of Reeds

Food and shelter are very scarce in this land of reeds.

You should keep moving, I reckon. Once the cloud-grass and the crags begin to thin, those are the sloping steppes. Try to stay to the north, if you can. Plenty of clear mountain streams. You’ll know the right way once you get out from under these snakeskin clouds. All copper miasma for as far as the eye can see. Fie!

You must have come a long way, traveller. These are the border lands. Any further south and you risk falling prey to all manner of beats. Savages, too.

’Tis too far? You say your legs are bowed and your back is bent?

I’d cast a pox on this wretched land If I could. There’s little to eat or drink, unless you have the lore to scrape together the yellow moss from under the rocks.

In the hills? Aye, if you’ve still the will to climb. There’s an old sanctuary there. Long burned and abandoned, now. A village, too. Long gone. All gone.

Why? Whyfore would a place of strength and learning burn to the ground? ’Tis a long story, traveler. Still, if you’re content to share the fire awhile…

I heard little about it in the beginning, but it was plain that it had been built up in the hills to stay out of the crown’s reach. It’s the Domaen, y’see. Those who walk the path of hands and feet. They’re loath to submit to some other way, so captivated they are with individual strength. No respect for titles or laws. No respect for anything that won’t strike them, some say.

So, t’was up in the crags. High and narrow enough that soldiers would have a hard time marching up there.

What were they so worried over? Well, I recall that some said their teachings made them unpopular. It was Nine Weapons. Nothing too suspect. Their focus was the bow and the pike, and they were known for their low stance; they would drop as close to the ground as they could to draw an arrow. Folks took to calling them frog-archers. It makes them sound martial, but ‘far as I know they always kept to themselves.

How did folks know? You must have come from far away, traveler. All across Erha and Singid, warriors mark the edge of the Domaen with spears and pikes. They paint them, y’see. A special paint they make from tree-sap that looks like the rising sun. Sunlight gold and black stripes, planted and thrust in the ground. Best not go past them unless you know your way around the Domaen. But y’did ask what happened.   

Back in the day, the frog archers from up in the hills were heroes. They made fair corpse-shepherds, so the people down in the valley liked ‘em. Understand, it’s dirty work, or so they teach us up here in the footlands. Folks were glad not to worry. It used to be that every moon or so you’d hear about some martial from up in the hills had saved some family or farmhand or other from an untamed corpse. They were learnt men and women too, and their head-teacher, an old Wanish man they called master Eilr, knew all kinds of burial rites, and he would always show the dead their due respect.

The lowlands of Yrel were fraught with wars, and all kinds of wastrels and orphans would linger in our copses and by the sides of roads. Master Eilr was a kind soul, though. He took in all sorts. Often he’d feed and clothe them, sometimes teach them to read and write and after a few years he’d send them on their way. Other times, though, these war-orphans had nowhere to go, so he’d take them on as his students.

The way I was told it, the fire started with two students just like that. Orphans, understand? One was stocky. Thick, tall for his age, happy for work, like a mule, some said. The other was thin and sly, and could already read and write; too clever for his own good, some said. The strong one was Bolare, the other was Risha.

Bolare and Risha had chosen to stay with the frog archers, and despite their young ages, both were said to be strong and clever, they advanced quickly through the Nine Weapons, and you’d see them out with all the older students in the hills, practicing their archery.

Students who excel at the first leg of a long journey have the hardest time reaching their destination, or so they say. Master Eilr had held both Bolare and Risha back from becoming fully ordained martials, and both of them longed to join the others on their corpse-taming expeditions or even travel far and wide through the Domaen challenging other schools and finding glory. In truth, both of them had done both already; Bolare could already string a two-man bow, and Risha had a solid grasp of calligraphy and would help master Eilr, who’s eyesight was failing by that time, to write to his peers.

Because of all this, master Eilr gathered them all in his study one day, which was a humble wooden shelter within the loamy caves, and sat them both down to have a talk about their advancement.

“Your abundant talents have not gone unnoticed,” master Eilr told them. “It is time we discussed your advancement.” At this, both the children went silent with anticipation. “I have resolved to test you. It is a rare test. Reserved for the most talented. I myself underwent it, a long, long time ago.”

Now their school was like a village unto itself, nestled in a little mountain crag. There were the caves, and then the school itself, and the winding mountain pass, but under all this was a fresh mountain stream; that was where master Eilr took them.

Their master introduced Bolare and Risha to Dogen there. He was a very old man, but on top of all that, he was very sick; not long for this world, understand?

“This is Dogen, a poor petitioner,” Master Eilr explained, and then pointed up into the clean blue sky, “and he has come to our school to request that we make his final days meaningful. He must live beyond the next full moon. That is your test.”

The two students were bewildered. Being diligent and determined, though, they set about to fulfilling old man Dogen’s every whim. All the other students would mock and make fun as they rushed about, because, either by happenstance or Eilr’s design, Dogen was rude and demanding.

Over the next two weeks, Dogen would berate them, spit at them, even use his withered old limbs to try to strike them. Bolare and Risha took to a little refuge underneath one of their wooden cabins, where the moss and water would muffle the sounds of their talking and they were out of range of Dogen’s loud demands.

At this point, they’d wiped him clean, massaged his back, prepared his food, woven bedding and pillows from reeds and told him their entire life stories, enduring harsh criticism the entire time. It was quite the ordeal, but not once did the two students bite back because each day, they could see that Dogen grew weaker. By the end of the first week, he could barely speak at all.

See, that was the test. By the third week, Dogen couldn’t move at all, and his voice was a harsh whisper.

“This isn’t fair,” Risha said in their sanctuary under the cabins, “how can we keep him alive for longer?” Bolare was silent; maybe he’d started to understand what master Eilr intended for them to learn. Risha wouldn’t let go so easily, though. “It’s impossible! Eilr is just looking to waste our time and keep us humble so we’ll swallow everything he feeds us.”

“I know you don’t mean it,” Bolare said. “It’s never easy to learn something important.”

“How can you say that if you don’t know what it is?” Risha scoffed.

The next night, Risha stole away by themselves. The rest of the students couldn’t have known, but Risha refused to accept any lesson. As the old man grew too feeble to browbeat them, Risha wanted someone to blame.

“If this is to humble or humiliate me, it won’t work,” Risha growled in the darkness, “I don’t know how they learned about my parent’s death, but if this is Master Eilr’s attempt to send a message, I’ll make him pay.”

The following week, old man Dogen passed away in his sleep. Bolare stayed with him until the end, but Risha couldn’t bare to face him. When Bolare woke, Dogen was gone. The two students were asked by the senior fighters to skip their morning practice, and came before master Eilr quieted with grief.

“There was no way to save him,” Eilr said, but before he could explain the lesson behind his test, the horns began to blow; the school was under attack.

Angry townspeople had stormed the mountain pass. They didn’t have much more than pitchforks and rocks, but they did their best to batter down the wooden gates all the same. By the time Master Eilr arrived, a few arrows had already flown and some of his students had been brained by slingers.

Other the course of that day, the truth came out. Risha had stolen down into the village and set a fire under the school’s flag, which, since you intended to journey up there, was a green profession of Fatih garnished with a few leaves. The students would often add their own frog, and that was how Risha was discovered; they had taken one that another student had recognized.

By this time the whole school was up in arms, but despite some injuries on either side, no-one had died. The townspeople were repelled, but despite the master’s diplomatic words, swore they’d have vengeance on the frog-archers.

No, they left Risha well alone. The rest of the students and the townspeople wanted to put the one responsible on trial, of course. Master Eilr had other plans.

Being Wanish and a long way from his homeland, Eilr was no stranger to strife and terrible tragedy. Instead of expelling the lesson his test to just Bolare and Risha, he explained it to all assembled. It’d been his way of testing whether or not they could let go of things. Accept defeat and move on, see? First he talked to them about grief, read from some scripture or other, but then he stood with his senior students and showed what would happen in a fight. For every strike, he would step back. He answered every grip with an empty body that was impossible to strike or grasp, and every move of his won was impossible to counter; every shape he made would fade away or collapse at the moment his students sought to take advantage.

At this, the townspeople were quelled by the pageantry, but a good deal of Eilr’s students remained angry; they claimed that his lesson was all well and good, but they reputation had been tarnished and the townspeople might well continue to seek revenge against them.

Well, now to fully answer your question, traveller. That night, Master Eilr burnt down their school. It was a punishment, he said, not for the students, but for all of them. They should’ve done more, so that the village people would have trusted them, he said, and to better instill his lesson in all of them.

The two students? You might as well guess. I imagine Bolare advanced. Risha did not. But there are still caves up there. Fresh water, too.

Master Eilr and his students? Well, none of them were too keen to fight with the townspeople or the crown. The ones that accepted the lesson stuck with their Master and passed on into the wilderness, and there’s no knowing where they settled. The ones that couldn’t accept the loss, that saw the burning of the school as needless, we settled down in the hills and valleys. I myself have mad my way hunting wolves. No, I’ve never set foot in the Domaen again. I fear those who did.