The Deep Tide
A Legend of Arrakech
A bad year on Arrakech is known as a ‘deep tide’, and this is why.
Some two hundred years ago, the storms whipped over the Spine of Tebron, summer squawls that trailed behind them a dark and foggy autumn. And from the depths of that bad autumn, came the sickness.
Parents and children went to bed at night, and in the morning found their very old and their very young dead, lungs full of wateriness, as though they’d been submerged beneath the tide.
“We won’t stand for this!” The townspeople called to the wise folk. “Why should we all die in our bed, away from the air and the battle?”
And so the priests summoned forth the true Varus in secret ceremonies, and such was their haste, they did not use the incense, nor the chanting, not the bells, nor the blood.
Varus was not pleased.
“All right, you’ve summoned me, but you’ve put no effort into it. So these are the last words I shall speak until you light me a fire made of no less than nine different types of wood and burn an ork over it.”
Well, orks were simple enough to find, but where to get nine different types of wood? Well, everyone brought a wood according to their occupation.
The farmers brought lemon and apple branches.
The fisherfolk brought willow branches from along the riverbanks.
The weaponsmiths brought olive branches (for nothing keeps good steel better than a barrel of olive oil).
The archers and arrowsmiths brought staves of yew.
The Dowager Countess brought rosewood from her own garden,
The shipwrights brought stout oak beams.
Then one day from those ships came a group of silent priests who carried in an ivory box a splinter from the Pandendron herself.
A few deep miners brought stones that turned out to be wood petrified long since, and argument raged among the wise folk whether wood that didn’t burn would count. In the end it was argued that petrified wood was therefore stronger than the usual kind, and strength is always to be applauded.
The fire was kindled one night in the dark of the moon, and the ork sacrifice, a chieftain no less, was held onto the fire with good Arrakech steel, and his screams nearly drowned out the chanting of the citizens clustered around.
In the darkest part of the night, a child cried out, and from the flames walked the form of the True Varus.
"So, at last, you pay me what is mine. Very well. Your fire of nine woods is already being smothered by the deep tide that threatens you. But while you cannot fight a tide of water, you can fight a tide of disease. Have your eldest and your youngest take an edged weapon to their beds tonight."
And so the very young were given their first daggers rather younger than is common, while the elderly citizens grasped again the swords and axes they had held with such pride while young. The parents and their children bid them goodnight, and then were persuaded to sleep in another room. The dawn was greeted by a ragged collection of screams. Every babe in arms and every senex and hag was covered in thick black blood, their bedclothes thick and crusted with it. But every one of them woke with unbroken skin and clean lungs, and there were no further cases of the sickness after that night.
Through the strength of even the weakest of people, the deep tide receded, and has never returned so deep from that day to this.
All Works are © Original Author
(OC Author - Ni Claydon)