Purity of Mind

Chapter 10: The Nine

"I'll let you get on with that," the other guard said, unhelpfully.

"Um, hi." I said to the wizard. "Do you need help unpacking?" I wasn't sure why I was talking; he couldn't understand anything I said and even if he did answer me, I couldn't understand him.

He motioned for me to follow him, then turned around and started walking away without checking to see if I'd actually done so. I glanced back to see if my fellow guard could help me, but she'd wisely gotten out of sight. I guessed I didn't have much of a choice.

I caught up with the wizard, who was moving relatively slowly. His robes dragged the ground with a hissing sound that he didn't seem to notice. He didn't say a word to me as we walked back to his wagon. As I'd suspected, Dalostaed was unloading it.

"Xiex," the dwarf / man said to the wizard. The latter barely acknowledged him, climbing back on top of the remaining portions.

"We're setting up?" I asked as calmly as I could.

If Dalostaed harbored any ill will over our conversation, it wasn't reflected in his manner. It was possible I'd been avoiding him for nothing. He gestured to the wagon. "Not all of it, thank the Ten. Just enough to unload a few tinctures we probably wouldn't be able to sell in the Far Lands."

I helped unload until he told me to stop, then I helped put the booth together. I found myself wondering if I was also going to be expected to sell the wares. I not only had no idea what they did, I also wouldn't be able to understand if anyone tried to ask me questions about them in Hidna. Still, I could build a booth.

As we were working, I asked: "The Ten?"

"You religious?" He asked me, looking in my direction skeptically before returning his attention to the work.

Growing up like I did, you either cultivated a deep personal faith to keep you steady in terrible times - which was nearly all of them - or you gave up on the idea of higher powers entirely. I'd known friends who had personal shrines to the Lord of Winds or the Lady of Subtlety. Me, I'd gone in the other direction.

"Not really." I summarized. "It's just that we're taught in Opal that it's the Nine."

Dalostaed grunted. "I'm not surprised. You know what we know about the Tenth? Nil, that's what. The texts I knew mention that there were ten, talk about how the world was created, and then each of the nine gets their own chapter. Somewhere along the line, number ten just got left out."

"Strange." I commented. I wasn't really sure where he was going with this, but it wouldn't be the first rambling conversation we'd had.

"You know the story about the creation of the world?"

I made an uncertain gesture. "Not word-for-word, no. But the gist of it."

"Let's kill some time, then. Tell me the story." Dalostaed was not killing time. There was a point to this. But given how our last conversation had gone, I was in a conciliatory mood.

"All right," I said. "In the beginning, there was Void."

"So you know that part word for word."

"Everyone knows that part word for word," I said. "It gets a little fuzzier from there. The five gods-"

"Or five aspects of one God," Dalostaed interrupted. "That's what the commonwealth out east teaches, though not all the kingdoms there agree on it. It's one of the things they fight with each other about."

"Okay," I said. "Anyway, however many gods there were decide to hop into the void and carve out their own slice of it, but they do a terrible job alone. Fire can't survive on its own, Air is literally just howling in the void, Water evaporates immediately, and Earth can't stay in one piece. Mind of course can't even exist without people. So they have to team up to make our world. Not sure how that makes any sense with what the easterners teach, though."