Theris was glad to be out of that stinking hole in the ground they called Har-Tor. Returning to N'shia-Potoma was almost like going home, without all the painful memories. After corralling the animals he visited the local smiths and negotiated the price for as many spear points as he could get. Fortunately, with planting time having passed, the local farmers demand for tools and repair work had lessened and the smiths were looking for work. Theris visited each one in turn and got them committed to as large an order as he could afford before they had a chance to talk to each other and discover how many spear points he needed. Their prices would almost certainly go up after that.
Sitting outside Khovan's place on a low stone wall, he ate roasted fish and watched the people walking by and wondered what their lives were like. Did they still have mothers and fathers? Sisters? Wives? Children waiting for them back home?
The fish was just as good as he remembered it tasting, though he had difficulty swallowing past the constriction in his throat as he remembered those innocent hopeful days sitting there eating the same fish with his father and brother and uncle and cousins. As he watched the passersby carrying their goods or just generally going about their lives, Theris thought he would happily trade places with any one of them.
"Excuse me, dra. Could you help me lift this?"
Seeing a beautiful young woman addressing him Theris leaped up, spilling the rest of his meal and bumping against the wall on which he had been sitting so that he nearly fell over backwards.
"I'm so sorry!" she laughed, displaying a brilliant smile of straight white teeth, and then apologized for laughing.
"It's nothing," Theris waved awkwardly at the remains of his meal which were already being devoured by a pair of opportunistic dogs. "I was finished anyway."
"I can't lift this high enough." The woman tugged at a large bag of flour lying on the ground next to her mule.
As Theris bent and put his hands around the bag, the lady's long curled hair brushed against his face and the perfume of her scent shivered down his spine. Fueled by a sudden desire to impress her, he smoothly lifted the large bag and held it on his shoulder with one arm.
"Oh," she smiled, suitably impressed, her large brown eyes shining up at him. "Put it here." She pointed at the top most bag of flour already strapped to the mule's back.
He placed it and held the bag while she expertly tied it off. He noticed a young girl of seven or eight years standing nearby watching and smiled at her. She smiled shyly and hid giggling behind her older sister's skirts.
"I can't help but feel I owe you something. I caused you to spill your food and then I put you to work," she smiled.
Theris suddenly didn't want her to leave. "Well, I was going to go next door and get a cup of beer to wash that fish down," he gestured at the dogs licking the ground. "You could let me buy you one as well."
"I shall buy the beer for both of us," she said and walked over to the beer seller. "My name is Asophra, by the way."
"Theris," he said snatching up his double-headed spear and joined her. "Do you live here in town?" he asked.
"No. Two please," she told the beer seller. "I live in Korion-Noton. It's a couple hours walk south of here."
"Oh."
There followed the sort of awkward silence that only occurs among people who really want to talk but don't know what to say.
"You have an interesting spear," Asophra said. "Are you a hunter?"
"Er, no. It's for fighting angorym."
"Angorym! You've fought them?"
"Well, one of them."
"You've fought an angoran? Really? And lived to talk about it?"
"Well, that was last winter. One of us didn't live to talk about it, at least not for long."
"Oh, I'm so sorry." She glanced away looking ashamed. Theris just stared into his cup.
"Did you hear what happened to those poor people up north? They say a whole bunch of the angorym attack everyone in the valley. Hardly anyone survived."
"Yeah, they started with my korion."
Her large oval eyes grew enormous.
"I'm from Korion-Garanth. It doesn't exist anymore. Only a few women and children made it out. We would have all died if our adras hadn't stayed behind and fought...and died." He suddenly felt very alone and something of that despair leaked into his voice.
"Oh, Theris." Her eyes shone with unshed tears.
He shivered on hearing her say his name. It somehow sounded different coming from her mouth. She placed her hand on the back of his hand and he placed his other hand on hers, sandwiching it, amazed at how warm and soft her skin felt.
"I want a sweet cake! You said I could have a sweet cake, Madra!"
Theris jerked upright. "Did she just call you madra?"
"Yes," Asophra's face stiffened. "Is there something wrong with that?"
"No! It's just... I thought she was your little sister!"
Asophra laughed and slapped him playfully on the back of the hand.
"Seriously! I can't believe it." He looked at Asophra's daughter. "You really do not look old enough to have a daughter of her age. You'd have had to have married when you were little more than her age."
Asophra blushed. "I was twice her age when I was married to Anair."
Theris' heart sank. He pulled his hand away, despair and guilt warring within him. Of course she was married. How dare he flirt with another man's wife!
"He died when she was six. I don't think she remembers him very well."
She looked up sorrowfully and they locked eyes. Elation, despair, hope and guilt swirled around inside him. He knew he had to be in love. He just didn't know what to do about it.
"I guess it's my turn to say I'm sorry."
Asophra laughed, though it sounded half-like a sob.
Another long silence followed, each lost in their thoughts.
"Will you be staying in town?" Asophra asked casually.
"I don't know," Theris replied struck again by an immense feeling of being lost in a big empty world. "I don't really have anywhere to go."
Asophra looked back up at him, a fragile hopeful smile on her face. "You could come visit us?"
"Us?"
"Yes, my older brother now manages our family's farm. He would love to hear your story... that is if you can bear to tell it."
Theris found himself smiling, and took her hand. "If you'll be there, I think I'll be able to."
-=====|==
"We've found a guide who knows the koria in the south," Jomel told Karux and Arnion as he led them to a strange little man with a broad, cone-shaped straw hat and a half-dozen heavily laden mules on a line. "His name is Odo. Odo, this is Karux and Arnion."
"Blessings of the mountain to you both." Odo briefly lifted his hat. "So you want to go visiting the neighboring koria?"
"All of them, actually." Karux said.
"They can't all be family; may I ask why you're visiting them?"
Karux chuckled, and then grew serious. "We need their help. We're hoping to offer them the secret of growing more crops in exchange."
"Ah! Merchants like me. Very well then, are you ready to go?"
Karux, Jomel and Arnion shouldered their packs. "We are."
"Right, then. Let's go." Odo yanked on the mules' lead. "Hyup!" Odo led the way with the easy steady pace of one used to walking long distances.
They hadn't gotten far before Karux, overcome with curiosity, had to ask him, "Why are you bringing all that stuff on those mules?"
Odo looked back at the mules. "I'm a traveling merchant."
"What? You have a whole store back there?" Karux took a second look at the goods strapped on to the mules. He'd assumed they were traveling supplies and that Odo had simply planned for a long trip.
"Pretty much."
"But why? Most merchants let their customers come to them. Why travel around to all these little koria just for the chance that someone there might happen to want to buy something you just happen to have?"
Odo looked up at the scattered clouds and scratched at his long gray beard. "Well, you see, it all began when I was a young boy. I used to enjoy going on long walks, especially into town, which my family liked to take advantage of. Whenever my father had need of anything in town, he would never fail to send me off to go buy it so he wouldn't have to make the trip himself. Soon the neighbors noted I would make regular trips to town and so would offer to buy me things if I would make the trip for them.
"Later, when my father died and my brother took over the farm, we had a disagreement on how it should be run. I decided to leave the farm and go to town permanently to become a merchant."
"Well, all that I can understand," Karux said. "But what made you leave the town? Did you just miss all the walking?"
Odo laughed. "I might have if I'd had the chance. No it was too hard to make a profit. No matter how low I was willing to sell my goods, there always seemed to be somebody willing to sell the same thing for less–and it's not cheap living in a big city either. Since most of my customers lived out in the koria, I'd just take their things out to them, where there are no other merchants and I can charge more."
Karux shook his head in disbelief. "I can't believe so many people would be so lazy that they would rather pay more than just walk to town."
"It's not all laziness. Certainly for the large expensive things, your common farmer will want the best deal he can get. But for small things like sewing needles or small utensils that don't merit a trip, those types of things just get put off until later, or until I come along.
"I don't charge that much more than they do in town. And, you have to bear in mind your average korion is going to be anywhere from three or four miles to half a day's walk away. If it is going to take you a day or two away from your farm just to make the round trip, you're not going to do that very often."
The wide road they had followed out of town quickly narrowed to a dirt track that meandered around hills, copses of trees and between nearly ripe fields. Karux had visited nearly all of the farms within a day's journey of N'shia-Potoma in a whirlwind tour where he had set up his carved wooden poles to provoke the crops' growth.
As they got further away from N'shia-Potoma, the path narrowed and became more over grown until one mostly had to guess where the path lay from bare patches in the grass and any stray clue a path had once been there.
They spent the night in a chief elder's house in a village with the curious name of Korion-Agor-Astu. The village was a little larger than most, but not yet the size of a market town.
The next day they headed south to Korion-Doulon. It consisted of a small circle of houses bisected by the narrow path. In the center of the village a strange, newly-built structure, looking somewhat like a spiraling conch shell of make-shift awnings, hung precariously on slanting poles.
As they entered the village Karux was struck by the curious lack of people. Most of the doors to the houses hung open but no one was visible within. No one drew water from the village well or tended the vegetable gardens by the houses. Karux scanned the neglected fields and saw a donkey and a couple of thin pigs loose, grazing on the crops. "Where is everyone?" he asked.
They peered into the nearest house. Clothes and utensils lay about, covered in dust as if their owners had simply abandoned them. A small pile of moldy bread and shriveled vegetables sat together on a sideboard.
Jomel stepped back out into the common area and turned in a slow circle, "I don't like the look of this."
"You don't think they were...attacked, do you?" Arnion asked.
"This wasn't here last time." Odo walked toward the structure in the middle of town. The others followed.
Stepping under the awnings and into the shade, Karux could suddenly make out dozens of bodies lying sprawled on the ground around a tree stump or short pillar. A dark rock roughly the size and shape of a man's heart, was perched on the stump.
"Most High have mercy!" Odo cried. "I think they're dead."
"Dead? Who could have done this?" Arnion asked.
"How could they have done it? I don't see any blood," Karux said.
"Could they have been strangled?" Jomel suggested.
Odo and Jomel each took a cautious step inside, carefully stepping over the feet of the people who lay radiating out in a circle with their heads toward the stump. They spread out carefully, looking for any sign or explanation of what had happened, when a woman opened her eyes and sat up.
"Oh! Hello!" She smiled. "Welcome to our korion."