Spring came slowly. The days grew warmer, but the nights were still cold, dusting the ground with frost as the plants struggled to send up new shoots through the hard soil. Carak had circled the untilled fields where no winter crop had patiently waited for the spring. He had found no animals to hunt and it would be a fortnight or two before any food could be planted and much longer before anything was ready to harvest—assuming they could find the seed to plant.
Carak sat on a bench under the old trees the elders once sat under. Most of them had not survived the winter. Only old frog-faced Batra had made it until spring and he was too sick to rise from bed. Even sweet Haydonae whom he once considered marrying had died of cold and hunger sometime during the long night, never living to see if the sun would return to start the New Year. He guessed that for her it hadn't. As Carak watched the sun rise, the cursed stone emerged from the shadows, rust-brown in dried blood.
The stone's thirst seemed to grow with each use. It required more and more blood from more and more people until everyone who could stand on their own feet were required to cut themselves and spill their blood upon the stone. Even then the amount of milk the stone gave grew less and less until each ever-increasing sacrifice of blood would barely provide for the surviving villagers' needs.
Filled with hate, Carak glared at the stone that had once seemed to promise them salvation from all their needs. He was pretty certain he knew what the stone wanted. He just didn't know if they could last until spring without giving in to it. One way or another he was determined to preserve the people he had left.
As Carak sat in dazed thoughts of "what if", he heard the distinct rattle of bronze plates, bowls and knives clanking together as someone approached the korion. "Temnein! Wexia!" The two men came out of their houses. "Come here. The rest of you stay inside and close your doors."
Odo, wearing his conical straw hat with the wide-brim, could just be seen plodding up the rise to their village.
"Did you bring the knife?" Carak muttered.
"Yes," Temnein replied.
"Are you hungry, Wexia?" Carak asked.
The once beefy man shrugged broad and boney shoulders. "It's gone past hunger to something else," he said. "I don't know what it is anymore."
The three stood motionlessly and watched Odo walk into the village, push back his hat and wiped his sweating brow.
"Greetings!" Odo said. "How are you?"
"We're surviving," Carak said.
"I see your stone has stopped giving milk." Odo looked up at the sun and wiped his forehead. "It's a shame as it's a warm day and I was going to ask for some refreshment."
Carak gestured at the stone with an open hand, inviting Odo to approach it. "We know how to make it give up its milk."
"Oh? I should like to see this," Odo said as he stepped closer to peer at the stone.
Carak signaled the other two with a cold silent glance. They moved to either side of the old man.
"Why is it brown?"
With well-practiced ease they grabbed Odo's wrists, jerking him forward and draping his arms over the stone, pinning him down with their hunger.
"Hey! What are you doing?" Odo cried.
Carak held out his hand and Temnein handed him the obsidian blade. He'd had to bleed reluctant donors before, but he had always cut them on the arms. Moving quickly so he didn't have to think, he grabbed Odo's bearded chin and pulled his head back.
"No!" Odo shouted through clenched teeth, as Carak put the knife to his throat. It took surprisingly little pressure for the stone knife to find the artery and open it up. Blood sprayed out in strong pulses coating the stone in a rich bright red.
The struggling Odo convulsed and went limp as the fountain of blood drained away. The milk began to pour from the stone. "Tell the others to bring their bowls," Carak told Temnein, then he looked to Wexia. "Help me get him out of sight," he said as he lifted Odo's shoulders.
Wexia grabbed Odo's legs. "Should we save the meat?"
Carak paused and closed his eyes as a wave of nausea spasmed through him. Had it really come to this? He sighed in resignation. Were they not already drinking their own blood? "Yes" he said. "Batra has a root cellar, let's put him in there for now."
They hefted Odo's corpse and carried it to Batra's house. Carak looked up and discovered he was walking south east, directly toward the sacred mountain. High Lord help me, he thought. If the Simarrah came today, the whole village would face His judgment. None of them would be allowed to return. Tears came to Carak's eyes which he couldn't wipe away while he carried Odo's corpse. He had only been trying to keep everyone alive.
-=====|==
Amantis rose late and ate a leisurely breakfast. He knew the crops had failed and that there would be little grain for sale in the market. He also knew the value of the grain he did have was increasing practically every minute, so he felt no urgency to open up the granary early. When he did arrive, he found a line of people outside already waiting so that when he opened the store, they eagerly outbid each other. By that afternoon he had collected a large pile of kerma and clay contracts including several pieces of property.
As he cleaned up at the end of the day he heard a group of men arguing outside his door. "We're closed," he called out, eager to go visit Destrin's tavern before he headed home.
"Pardon us, Amantis, we need to speak."
Amantis looked up and saw virtually the entire town's council of elders standing in his store.
"I'm afraid I'm closing up for today."
Mosond, the wealthy shipwright and the leader of the council, addressed him. "We would like to speak with you about a matter of grave civic importance."
Amantis smiled, "I'm a man who has always taken his civic responsibilities seriously."
"Good. Very good." Mosond glanced back at the others and cleared his throat. "As you know the crops have not done well. The people are beginning to grow restive with hunger...."
"I believe I warned everyone of this last year."
"Had you? I remember the angorym threat..." Mosond looked a little surprised.
"Absolutely. My seer stone warned me and I warned everyone else. That is the reason Corago hired me. He was one of the few to listen to me and as you can see, he has profited by it."
"Er, yes. I remember now." Mosond drifted off as if he had lost the trail of his thoughts.
"Listen up," Taelik, an irritable old man wearing a traditional fisherman's hat blurted out. "Food is getting scarce and you are charging too much."
"Am I," Amantis frowned. "Only this morning I had customers practically throwing kerma at me, each offering more to make sure they got the grain rather than their neighbor. How can you say I'm charging too much when they are so willing to pay?"
"But some people can't afford to pay." This came from a thin faced man with a short salt and pepper beard. "You should reduce your demands in trade."
"Ah, yes, well there is a nice large house on the promontory overlooking the harbor I'd like to own, but I can't afford it. Will you also force the owner to reduce his demands in trade?"
"Now see here, that is not at all the same thing..." Mosond began.
"Hey that's my house you're talking about." A surprised cry came from the back of the group.
"And it's very nice too," Amantis smiled.
"Thank you."
"Look, no one is forcing anyone to do anything," Mosond began, looking back at the aggrieved home owner. "...and this isn't about personal gain..."
"But it is about my personal losses," Amantis cut in.
"We're simply asking you to consider the public good!" Mosond finished.
"And will the public consider my good as well?"
"Well, of course, er... that's not really...um," Mosond said.
"It may surprise you to find that I have actually been considering the public's good even when the public did not."
"Oh?"
"After warning the public of the coming danger, and being ignored, I realized that the public cannot always be trusted to act in its own self-interest. So I devised a plan by which the needs of the public can be entrusted to a man with proven abilities, to manage their resources for them—much in the same way that the council currently manages things like the harbor and fishing rights and the quality and safety of certain trade goods."
"This person would be...you?" Mosond asked.
"Yes. If you will make me a member of the council and will follow my plan, I guarantee no one need ever starve."
"What?" The elders all started talking at once. Some seemed outraged at the suggestion of adding one so young to their council. Others were shocked by his assertion that no one need ever starve. These were evenly split between those frowning in disbelief and those standing wild-eyed in hope.
"What is this plan?" Mosond asked after shushing everyone.
"Have every man set aside one tenth of all that the land and river produces to be brought into a public storehouse to be managed on their behalf, so that in times of lack, they can be provided for."
The elders all stood silently, their eyes glazed as they tried to envision the scope of what he had just suggested.
"Where ever would we find store houses so large?" the thin-faced man in back of the group finally asked, breaking the silence.
Amantis shrugged as if it were the simplest question in the world. "The laborers and those who do not produce anything should be required to give one tenth of their labor. They can build the warehouses. It would only be fair that everyone contribute to the public good."
The elders thought about this quietly. A few began to nod their heads and purse their lips thoughtfully. "We'll have to think about this," Mosond said. "You've made a very intriguing suggestion."
Amantis made sure to increase his demands in his trading over the next few days. The people's unrest decided the issue for him when they demanded the council do something. The council finally announced their decision to establish public warehouses and Amantis was to be put in charge of this. Some people loved the idea and came by his store the following day to tell him that they knew he would do an excellent job and thank him for taking it on. Others distrusted the decision and one could sometimes hear grumbling in the taverns where people go to grumble about that sort of thing.
As a reward, Amantis began to distribute small packages of grain to people for free as an advance on the stores to come. He made sure, though, that he had a contract in clay with the seals of all the council of elders first.
-=====|==
As spring turned to verd, the early crops grew green and promising, only to wither and die as a spreading blight seemed to crawl under its own power up from the south. It stopped at the borders of those fields under Karux's protection. Although those crops did not grow as wildly as they had the previous year, yet the fields that had Karux's poles in them remained green and healthy.
Even the doubters were forced to admit the usefulness of Karux's arts and complimented him on his genius. Karux would remind them that what arts he possessed had come from the Lord of the Mountain and would repeat the dark oracles of the future and urge them to prepare.
This did not provoke as much enthusiasm.
"Karux, there are some men here from Korion-Elpis who wish to speak with the oracle who causes the crops to grow," Gerron said with a wry smile.
Karux looked up from the crate lid filled with sand in which he and Eiraena had been drawing shapes. He hoped to learn if she knew any patterns he had yet to discover and, at the same time, he thought he could teach her to speak by saying their names.
"Are they here or are they in N'shia-Potoma?"
"They're in the main hall," Gerron said.
"Trying to impress the strangers, are we?"
Gerron laughed. "Well, we are trying to convince them that they need to ally with us now, because if your oracles come true, they will want to hide here for protection."
"If?" Karux rose from his chair.
"When! When they come true," Gerron replied hastily. "Very few people doubt your oracles, now that the blight has come."
"You would have thought they would have learned to trust me when the angorym attacked," Karux said a little bitterly as he headed for the door.
"You were still young then, and the northern vale was far away." Gerron shrugged. "Our success in stopping the angorym at the pass only made the danger seem more distant." He paused and looked back at Eiraena. "You know she's just about outgrown that little shift of hers."
"Oh?" Karux looked over Gerron's shoulder.
"The wife has asked me to tell you that you should get her a proper dress."
"Huh? I guess so. I hadn't thought about it."
"She also said you should see that she gets bathed more often and comb that rat's nest head of hair she has."
"Really?" Karux asked, "She said 'rat's nest'?"
"Perhaps not in those exact words." Gerron smiled and started walking down the corridor.
"Well she's welcome to try," Karux said. "Eiraena hardly lets anyone touch her.
"Perhaps you should bring her by before you leave," Gerron suggested as they stepped into the hall.
"Leave? Leave where?" Karux asked.
Gerron just gestured at the small knot of men standing in the middle of the hall, gazing around them with open mouths.
"This is the oracle Karux," Gerron announced as they walked up to the waiting men.
"In truth?" said the eldest. He had a long gray crescent of hair that curved around the back of his head. "I thought he would be much older."
"Is it not said that 'in those days the weak shall guard the strong, the poor shall feed the wealthy and the young shall guide their elders along the path of return'?" Karux quoted.
The elder bowed his head in acknowledgement. "I don't know how wealthy we are, but it is for food that we've come."
"Well you've come to the right place," Karux smiled. "We have no lands, yet still we are able to feed you."
This raised a few eyebrows and a shudder of fulfilled prophecy seemed to run through them.
"As poor as we are, we haven't come asking for a handout. We are hoping you can loan us some food until this blight is over after which we will gladly repay you two-fold."
Karux shook his head. "If you have spoken to our elders, then you already know that we cannot do that. We have too many people dependent on us for their survival to give food away—even as a loan. If you would share in our stores, then you must also contribute to their well-being."
The chief elder looked grim. "They say the price is men and spears." He looked to one of the young men who bore a striking resemblance to himself and Karux guessed that the elder had begun to realize some of the wealth he had not before counted. "Very well, if we must. When can you come?"
Karux looked to Gerron. "When are the tireavs heading north to reclaim the valley?"
Gerron raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps a fortnight, why? Were you planning on going with them?"
"Yes," Karux said. "I think it best if I did."
"I'm sure they'll be happy to have you, especially after last winter."
"Could you have them meet me at the northern pass in a fortnight then?"
"I don't think it will be a problem."
Karux turned back to the visitors. "In that case we better leave now."
-=====|==
Amantis strode down the streets of Nur, swinging his counting stick and enjoying its rattle. Each rattling bead represented a man in his soreav, a vadh of grain in his storehouse and a family in debt to him for their very survival. The most satisfying thing of all was that their numbers were so great that even his counting stick could not count them all.
As he neared his central storehouse he passed the lines of people waiting for their daily food ration. The city dwellers stood quietly and in neat rows while his soreav stood guard over them with spears in hand, and bemused grins. He knew the people had been waiting since dawn while he enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before coming to open the storehouse.
Approaching the door, he spied one young man with a long narrow face and a weak chin who glared fiercely at him with dark sunken eyes. "What's wrong with you?" Amantis demanded.
"This is all your fault, isn't it?" the boy said.
"What do you mean by 'this'?"
"You bought up all the food and created a panic saying there was a blight," the boy began, his voice growing louder and his manner growing more agitated as he spoke until he was nearly spitting in anger. "Then you tricked the elders so that only you could sell food in the city!"
Amantis laughed. "If you don't believe in the blight, you can try going out to the fields and growing your own food." Amantis turned to the biggest and meanest looking guard. "See that he doesn't get any food." Amantis knocked on the door and heard the snap of a wooden bolt being thrown back. The door creaked open a crack and the clerk within poked his head out, saw Amantis and opened the door for him.
Inside the vast warehouse, multiple levels of bins groaned beneath the weight of grains, produce, pickled fish and every sort of food stuff—even keleos nuts. Amantis looked up admiring it all. "Right, let's open for business," he called out to his clerks. They thundered down the ladders, rushed to the doors and set up the counters. Amantis climbed to the upper lofts where he had set up an office. Here he took the reports of the food that had been collected and generally enjoyed looking down on all the activities under his direction.
After several hours of work, he heard a commotion start up outside.
"Hey! You can't go in there."
"You have to get in line!"
"They're not even from Nur. They shouldn't get any food!"
Amantis rose and looked down at the warehouse floor where a line of supplicants, waiting for their food, craned their necks to see what was happening inside.
A reaver ran in through the doors and called up to Amantis, "Dra? We have some people here to see you."
"What sort of people," Amantis asked cautiously.
"Some, er, enthusiastic people," the spearman said with a glance over his shoulder.
"Very well, I'll deal with them." Amantis climbed down the ladder and stepped outside. "What's going on out here!" he demanded of one of the guards.
A score of people dropped to their knees and bowed their heads to the ground. "Please help us great oracle!"
Amantis looked out over the bent backs of the small crowd. "Huh?"
One of the men looked up, and tried to avert his eyes at the same time. "We've come from starving koria beyond Nur. We've heard the Lord of the Mountain has sent a wise oracle who can make food grow even in a desert."
Amantis smiled. "Why should I give you any food?"
The man ducked his head. "Forgive us. We are starving and desperate. We have nothing to offer but our lives. But if you would have mercy on us and save us, we will pledge our lives in service to you."
Amantis smiled. "Very well. Your faithfulness has impressed me and moved me to compassion."
The men looked up hopefully.
Amantis turned the leader of the guards. "Have Ctonos pick his best instructors and send them to each of their koria. Select the best of their young men for service in the soreav, but be sure to leave enough men to plow and harvest what can be grown. Send the rest of the people to me." He started to go back inside.
"Oh thank you! Thank you!" the men called out. "May the Lord of the mountain shower you with blessings!"
Amantis turned back to the guard. "Oh, and find me some men who know how to mark animals. We'll need to mark those who've offered their lives in service."