BLACK FLIES buzzed through the chill air. The light of the sun, not yet above the treetops, ate away the morning mist with a gradually increasing brightness and warmth.
Yeth Dan Yoth, once apprentice to the Prime Sight Master of the Supreme Yutan Pod, now secret scout and carnival attraction, waved her long, pale fingers over the bowl in her hand, shooing away a small but determined cloud of insects. She frowned as she spooned a mouthful of cooked oats past her teeth, trying to avoid her tongue as she swallowed.
Humans, Yeth thought. Eating food for pack animals and delighting in the flavor. She grimaced and took another bite, watching the satisfied looks on the human members of the carnival troupe as they collected their bowls of oat slop from the camp cook and devoured the mushy contents with great satisfaction, smiling and making moaning sounds of pleasure. She turned to her companions at her side, Tarak the roagg and Shifhuul the wyrin, both seated on the same fallen log as herself. Shifhuul stared at the bowl of oats in his hands, sniffing at it with his long snout, wincing in distaste. Tarak, in contrast, had already licked his first bowl clean and begun on his second. Carnival troupe members were normally each afforded the same portions of the meals, but Tarak's size granted him special consideration. He stood more than a head taller than Yeth, and she stood a head taller than most of the humans. Tarak needed more food than the others. She also suspected that the cook feared to refuse the massive roagg's request for second helpings.
"You going to eat that, or watch it dry and collect flies to season it?" Tarak nodded with his muzzle toward the bowl in Shifhuul's hands.
"I not like bad-bad horse grain often so." Shifhuul stirred the bowl of oat mash with his spoon, then grunted and took a bite.
Yeth hid a smile at the wyrin's mangled syntax of the human words. While the creature acted reasonably intelligent, it seemed incapable of mastering any language other than its own.
"Flies might improve the flavor." Yeth forced herself to eat another spoonful. She would need the sustenance for the day's long march. She and Tarak walked at the rear of the convoy of wagons and tethered animals and shuffling humans. Leotin, the carnival master, sat in the cart at the front of the line and preferred the troupe members most capable of wielding weapons to bring up the rear in case of ambush. Shifhuul always rode in the last wagon, dozing through much of the day. While Yeth and Tarak took turns sleeping through the night, Shifhuul's largely nocturnal nature left him awake for much of the duration of their nightly watch of the carnival campgrounds.
Yeth found herself surprised at how well the three of them worked together. She had not expected to find the company of a roagg and a wyrin to be endurable, much less enjoyable. She imagined they felt the same. The peoples of the various realms rarely interacted beyond the few merchant sailors who might trade at the docks among their respective coastal towns. The yutans of the , in particular, did not seek to involve themselves with the other peoples of Onaia. However, sharing the same mission helped the three share their days in harmony. It had been a struggle at first, their individual languages a barrier to conversation. Each spoke a little of the old Shen tongue of the Great Dominions that had once ruled the entire human . After joining the carnival, Yeth and Tarak's skill with the speech improved greatly. And even though they currently traveled in the , enough of the carnival folk spoke Shen to make communication possible, if sometimes blandly simplistic. She had also managed pick up enough of the Easad language of the Atheton and Nevaeo Dominions to follow conversations if not lead them.
Traveling with the carnival proved to be a boon of great fortune. The carnival folk all hailed from different dominions, spoke different languages, looked and acted differently from the peoples of the towns they encountered. With so much variation on display, the appearance of a yutan, a roagg, and a wyrin, while extraordinary, did not seem so unusual or frightening. It certainly made it easier for the three of them to stay alive in a hostile foreign land populated with a people plagued by dreams urging them to take to the roads in defiance of their rules and religious leaders.
Beside her, Shifhuul placed his spoon down and turned to Tarak.
"You hear?" Shifhuul sniffed the wind.
"Yes." Tarak turned his ears toward the trees lining the road where the carnival made camp. "Humans in the forest. Ten maybe."
"Ten and two." Shifhuul sat the bowl on the ground and rose to his feet, drawing his slender sword from the sheath at his waist.
Yeth and Tarak stood as well. The roagg hefted the two axes resting at his feet while she grabbed her spear from where it leaned against the log. She gestured to one of the nearby humans, a boy of fifteen, the animal tender, Donjeo.
She did not want to call out and give warning to whoever advanced toward them. She pointed to the forest and shook her spear. The boy stared blankly at her for a moment and then jumped as though poked by her weapon, the realization of her meaning breaking upon his mind. He ran toward another group of carnival folk, quietly alerting them that someone approached from the woods.
Yeth turned and stood to face the dense wall of forest trees with her companions. She could now hear the sounds of the humans approaching. They made more noise than she expected for a possible ambush.
"More militiamen?" Yeth asked Shifhuul.
"I not think." Shifhuul raised his snout and inhaled. "Smell no same."
"They smell unwashed." Tarak rubbed the black nose of his muzzle with the back of his massive, claw-tipped hand as though trying to wipe away the odor.
The leaves of the trees at the edge of the forest shook, and Yeth readied her spear. They had been attacked by bandits and harassed by militias repeatedly. Between the two, she hoped for the militia. As long as the carnival harbored no pilgrims, they generally lost interest, especially at the sight of Tarak and his twin axes.
Wide eyes and dirt-smudged faces emerged from the forest into the late morning light.
"Great goddess!" A woman in near rags shouted in Easad and stumbled backward, clutching a small boy in her arms.
"Goddess protect us!" A man carrying a large canvas pack on his shoulders held up his palms as though to defend himself with his open hands.
More humans stepped from the trees, each with frightened looks and raised arms. One man with gray hair stepped forward from the small crowd clinging to each other. He walked with the aid of a long branch to favor his left leg. Yeth noticed the carnival master, Leotin, step up beside her. He always made an appearance to assume his leadership once a potential threat had been deemed satisfactorily controlled. She rested the butt of her spear in the weeds at her feet. Shifhuul and Tarak lowered their weapons as well.
"Hello, friends." Leotin said in Easad, casting his arms wide with dramatic flair. "What brings you from the forest this fine, bright morning?"
"Fear for our lives," the gray-haired man said.
"The militia," the woman with the child added.
"Dangerous times." Leotin lowered his arms.
"We seek sanctuary in numbers." The gray-haired man hobbled forward, leaning heavily on his walking stick.
"We are not a traveling refuge, I am afraid." Leotin raised his open palms in a gesture of regret.
"Pilgrims have a duty to protect one another." The man stopped and gripped his walking stick tightly.
A word from the man's plea kindled a memory in Yeth's mind.
"You have armed beasts to guard you," the man with the canvas pack said, his eyes darting warily between Yeth, Shifhuul, and Tarak.
"We are a carnival, not a pilgrim band," Leotin said. "We can offer you no shelter."
"But we..."
"We should take them in."
The new voice to join the discussion belonged to a young, pale-faced human woman named Palla. A merchant's daughter from the Nevaeo Dominion, she acted in the carnival play and did magic tricks for the crowds before the performances. She often voiced her opinion when others remained obedient to Leotin's decisions.
"We do have a duty." Palla stepped up to stand beside Leotin. "We cannot abandon people to their deaths."
Again, that word. The word that had haunted her these last months. The word that she had struggled against and abandoned, only to have it hunt her and claim her and set her upon the journey that brought her to where she stood.
Eight Months Ago
"It is your duty."
"It is my punishment."
"The need to atone for the shame you have brought upon your family and your pod is not a punishment."
Yeth looked away from Sight Master Lamna, her eyes fixing on a stone at her feet.
"It still seems like a punishment."
Sight Master Lamna sighed, looking out at the waves of the ocean far below the cliff beneath their feet. Her former mentor stood half a head shorter than Yeth, advanced age stooping her shoulders and bending her back. Three times Yeth's forty-five years, the elder yutan still commanded unquestionable respect from her onetime pupil. Yeth strove to imitate her former mentor's motionlessness. Even after more than twenty years of study under the elder woman's tutelage, she still felt like a novice in her presence, especially when being reprimanded.
"We must discover what these dreams mean and what the humans of the Iron Realm will do about them." Sight Master Lamna folded her hands behind her back.
"And it is a convenient reason to banish me from our realm." Yeth's anger slowly replaced the discomfort of challenging her mentor.
"It is not banishment. You will return." Sight Master Lamna looked down the side of the cliff face.
"Assuming I survive." Yeth followed her mentor's gaze.
"I have no doubt of that," Sight Master Lamna said. "I would not send you if I thought you incapable of returning."
"A pointless errand," Yeth said. "Why does the Supreme Pod care what the humans dream?"
"Why do you assume that only humans have this dream?" Sight Master Lamna cocked an eye at Yeth.
Yeth did not respond to this question. She had not heard of yutans dreaming the human dream of a new god. Most yutans did not believe in gods the way humans did. Yutans worshiped the universe as the manifest body of a sentient divine being, but not one that acted in yutan affairs. The largest yutan sect, the Aasho, envisioned this divine being as existing in three aspects that they worshiped in the form of personified beings — not gods but facets of divine nature. Onn the force of creation, Tam the force that sustained all life and the universe, and Kiv the aspect of death and destruction that led back in the circle of existence to Onn and creation. What could it mean that yutan people dreamed of a human god?
"I did not know this," Yeth finally said.
"There is much you do not know and much more that you refuse to accept." Sight Master Lamna kicked a small stone and watched it fall toward the water. "You have disrupted the natural order. There are always consequences to our actions. This you know."
Yeth winced as the ocean swallowed the plummeting stone with a nearly imperceptible splash. She felt like that small chunk of rock. Easily discarded, impossible to retrieve. Like her actions. Once taken, they could not be undone. The effects and consequences had to be lived with.
"You will meet two others. A roagg and wyrin. They will accompany you. Learn what you can and report back." Sight Master Lamna handed Yeth a thick steel disc two fingers wide and a finger thick. "There are four coins cut from a single metal dowel. I will have one, as will the roagg and wyrin seers. You will report back to us every ten days."
"And if I refuse?" Yeth considered the costs of accepting the pointless task and those of rejecting it. The Supreme Pod would do nothing regardless of what the dreams might mean or what the humans did about them. The yutans never involved themselves in the affairs of the other realms.
"Your refusal will result in actual banishment." Sight Master Lamna's voice sounded both hard and tender at the same time.
"Then I will take my family and leave."
"Yours is the misconduct and yours will be the banishment, not your child or your former mate."
Yeth's hard anger shattered — sharp fragments transforming to fear and lodging themselves in her heart. Banished. Alone. Her choice had led to a reaction that demanded she make another choice. How could she make that choice?
"Do not think," Sight Master Lamna said, seeming to hear Yeth's silent question. "For once, simply obey."
The Present
"We can hide them among our people." Palla gestured toward the camp. "There are few enough. They will blend in."
"And when the next ragged band stumbles upon us looking to camouflage their true nature, what then?" Leotin still looked at the pilgrims, even though he spoke to Palla.
Yeth listened to the argument, curious of the eventual resolution. What choice would Leotin make? What did he see as his duty? She had made her choice to abandon her duty once. And she had later chosen to perform her duty because no other real choice existed for her. But did following her duty really change anything? If she survived this scouting mission in the human realm and managed to return home, would she truly be forgiven? And would that forgiveness entail allowing her to live the future she desired? Sight Master Lamna had implied such, but not explicitly so. Her mentor had never been one to make assurances she could not fulfill.
"Just for the day," the man with the walking stick pleaded. "We'll leave at the first town."
Yeth looked away, once again powerless to affect change in her life, to drive the circumstances before her rather than be led by them. She squinted and frowned as she stared down the road in the direction they had traveled the prior day. A cloud of reddish dust rose in the air an hour's journey back along the lane.
"No time for arguing." Yeth spoke to Leotin and the others as she pointed along the road. "Men on horses coming fast. At least ten. They'll be here soon."