Roamers of Tala

I: I’m a Wayfarer, Aren’t I?

Shara’s father had not wanted her to claim what she claimed. But she announced it to the village and there was no choice but for her to leave. Beyond the northern gate, the hooded ferryman stood in the stern of his fӕring at the dock, waiting for her.

“I’m sorry, father,” she said.

He did not look at her. Sea salt clung to his black beard. “Will we ever see you again?”

“Of course, you will.”

“They’re not even our people.”

Shara shook her head. “And these are not our lands. Not originally.”

“They say the roamers are sorcerers. That they do blood magic.”

“Yes, I heard you talking to Mother.” Shara adjusted the pack on her shoulder. The sun was invisible behind a white sky of clouds and rain. Droplets of water beaded down the fabric of her cloak from the seal fat and dampened her red hair. “You once sang of the roamers, when we were children. I remember it. Why do you fear them now?”

“Och, lullabies, nonsense stories. They are stealing my only daughter.”

“They’re not stealing me.”

“You were to sail with me this year. It was to be our first.”

“I know.”

“And you’re past the age of stillness. And the miller’s boy—”

“I know.”

He stepped closer to her. “Please come back to us, Shara. Your mother and I—come back to us when you’re able.”

Shara embraced her father. “I will,” she said, breathing in the smoke from his cloak and the stink of fish.

Shara turned and stepped into the muddy thoroughfare, avoiding a puddle and cutting through the grass to bypass the northern gate. She splashed down onto the shoreline from the upstream edge, a simple tree trunk pegged with stakes, and stepped carefully along the hard of birch logs and planks where her father’s boat was beached. She reached the dock and pulled herself up, her hand nearly slipping on the greased pylon. Shara stood before the ferryman’s boat and turned back to look on her village, her father.

“You didn’t tell him,” the ferryman said.

Careful not to tip the starboard rail, Shara stepped into the fӕring. “How could I?”

#

The steps to the chancel were smooth, worn by centuries of roamers shuffling their leather pattens to ascend them, up and into the dark halls of the temple lit by torches ensconced along the stone walls. Shara was escorted to the sibyl.

“A neophyte and a northerner,” the woman said as Shara entered the room. Her robes were of a finer cloth than any Shara knew, dyed red and yellow. Her skin was deep brown. Her hair was black but graying. “What a Godsend. From a village by the Donar, yes?”

“My father is a fisherman,” Shara said.

“I have heard it is beautiful.”

“It is.” Shara thought then of gray mornings, the sea breezes that would whine through the pine trees and stir up the chickens in the miller’s pen. Even when there were no clouds in the sky, the Donar always seemed dark and unwelcoming.

“Tell me, young one, how does it work for you?”

“How does what work?”

“Your blessing, child. I’m ever fascinated by God’s diversity.”

Shara looked behind her as a robed man carefully closed the door. “I have only done it once.”

“Such self-control. That is commendable. Well.” The woman rose and her robes fell a little, the heavy chain around her neck holding the emblem of her order. “How did you come back to us?”

“I don’t know,” Shara said. “It is like I never left. I was working on my father’s net, finishing our decorative family knot, the storm paw—something he had only just taught me. And then it happened, I went away.”

“Yes.”

“But I didn’t do anything to come back. I just came back.”

“Remarkable.”

“The ferryman who brought me says I’ll never be able to go home.”

The woman smiled hungrily. “Why would you want to? You’ve more than one world open to you now, child. And that means you have a duty.”

#

The Roamers of Tala were blessed with the power to travel the seven worlds, they said. But the work of their order was hard and secret. It required assurances.

Shara was on the seventh night of her fast, having only drank from the sacred bowl thrice each day. Her stomach was a kiln pit, and she could hardly stand. She lay on the hay-filled sack in her cell thinking of her brother, Tohchim. He was three years older than her, and he had always loved to prod her. “Nets will be your work, Shara. Father will see, you will see. Nets and knots and nets.”

She had not told him then that she didn’t mind the nets. It was the sea she dreaded. She’d always had a sour stomach on the boat and was never comfortable without the surety of solid ground. And here she was now, no longer sure of anything. She explained to her father and announced to everyone that she had tied a magic knot and the solid ground slipped from under her. She told them of how she found herself in a strange room of iron with a window looking out into the heavens. No sun, no blue or clouds, only black and stars in their countless numbers through glass somehow blown into a perfect circle that could be seen so cleanly through—so clear through that glass, Shara had told them. And the end of all things beyond it.

The door to her cell grumbled as it opened and a large, barely-bearded man walked inside. He held a riveted helm in one hand and a cloth bundle in the other. “I’ve brought you the first meal. It’s small.”

“My stomach.”

The man nodded. His hair was long and the color of dead grass. “We must go slow. A little at a time.” He handed the bundle to Shara who unwrapped it, revealing a hunk of bread and a cutting of hard cheese. Shara tore a piece of the bread and pushed it into her mouth with a finger. “Who are you?” she asked.

The man wore a mail coat and a bearskin cloak over his shoulders. A sword hung at his side. “Beinir is my name. And I’ve seen five of my nineteen winters among the roamers here.”

“When will—what is next? Why are you so armed?”

“The worst of it is done,” he said. “To my mind. There’s the brand still, but I’ll take a fat lot of pain over hunger any day. Eat up.”

Shara took another bite of bread. “What’s this all for? I’m a wayfarer, aren’t I? Why must I do these things?”

Beinir squatted down before her. “I’m not sure anyone knows anymore. There’s the old books. Everyone just follows them. I suppose some of it is good preparation.”

“Preparation for what?”

“That’s not how it works, girl. You have to finish the rites first.”

#

II: That Isn’t the Point

Shara listened to the old skade standing in front of the fire in the courtyard. The stars were out and the cold wind beat at his black robes, fanning dust up from the ground at his feet. Shara was seated on one of the stones arranged in a circle around the firepit.

“I beseech all with ears to hear,” the man said, “and all singing to be silent ahead of my tale of old times and worlds before. It was told to me and my mother as to our father and his mother and her father and mother going back to the still days. When there were seven roads to the glade we know, seven houses of folk who could not leave or travel the roads. The sand and waves were new, the mountain and meadow and red forests of the west. The isles of our people had not yet risen from the sea.”

Shara noticed that Beinir had come to join them in the courtyard. He sat down at the fire across from her. His long hair drew in the orange of the flames.

“Recall old Honzhul the long-legged and his daughters who made those isles and sired our folk, and how they opened the seven roads to the glade we know. We knew only of our world. We knew nothing of the others, Delrim, Pangor, Madrol, Eldhut, Gho, Benjur. The roads were new as the worlds were new.

“It was Honzhul who held council with God and made the first pact. The daughters of Honzhul were blessed. They were made wayfarers, the star roads opened to them in those calm times. They were permitted to travel the roads to the glade we all know and to build new roads between. But the blessing price we yet pay.”

Shara saw as Beinir noticed her watching him. She took in his smile and it reminded her of her father before casting off, the wind in his hair in the dark of morning.

“Bring down the wicked at the end of the roads,” the old skade said. “Foster the weak. Suffer no theft unless it is right. Forgive the penitent and wicked alike, though you strike them down. Do not kill unless it is right, feed the visitor. Protect the roads and the houses at their ends, leave your tales behind you. And avoid the glade we know. Look not into the glade at the end of the roads.”

The man stepped in front of Beinir when he had finished his oration. “I trust you were listening, child.”

Shara blinked and sat up straighter. “Yes, of course.”

“Because these are your commandments. The Roamers of Tala are chosen by God.”

#

Shara never believed in the gods of her grandparents, and this new one seemed even more unlikely. But the Roamers of Tala had answers to explain what happened to wayfarers. The sibyl said that Shara visited a world where life had sped up and shot outward like the earthen blast from a lightning strike. And that lightning had been harnessed in the same way as water in their own world, and there were wheels to run it through its courses inside ships that fly and poke holes through the firmament to land wherever and whenever they want, and she said that somehow Shara was blessed, allowed to visit that impossible new world. A storm paw knot was all she’d needed. But there was also a problem.

Shara told the sibyl she had only spent moments in the iron room looking through that glass at the stars before she was yanked back to her fishing net. She told of how her brother Tohchim knelt on the floor beside her, puzzling over her face. “You look different,” he had said. “You are looking at me strange. Did you age right in front of me, sister?” Shara said that she maintained the expression which so befuddled her brother and pushed him away, leaving the net unfinished.

The sibyl stared at her, a sudden frown wrinkling her forehead. “He said that?”

Shara looked away from the woman, toward the tapestry covering the window. “Something like that.”

#

Beinir laughed and with a finger pressed a line of hair behind his ear. “I suppose you would be in trouble. The laws are the laws.”

“You don’t seem like a rule follower to me,” Shara said.

“We’ve only just met. What are you, sixteen, seventeen?”

Shara hung her head.

“Well. Without the commandments, we’re wanderers. The laws make crusaders of us.”

“Crusaders?”

“We guard the roads. We protect, feed, and clothe the innocent and damned in the same way. We build new roads and strengthen our order before whatever god it is these roamers love.”

“But what if there is no god, or gods?”

Beinir raised an eyebrow. “How can these worlds exist without gods to create them? How can we be wayfarers, girl?”

“I’m not a girl, I’m nearly as old as you. You’ve hardly a beard on you. And couldn’t it all just be natural?”

Beinir groaned. “Sure. Anyway, that isn’t the point. The point is the sagas.”

#

III: We Can’t Always Know What We See

The sibyl claimed that they knew now there were seven varieties—iron, dust, wood, water, shadow, blood, moonlight. And she said that the world Shara visited was of the iron variety. Beinir had been to a water world and a wooden one that was not unlike their own. He had been to many others he had yet to classify. But his blessing was rare and stifling, he said. He was only able to travel on the summer and winter solstices. Those two days would yawn into being and fire him off to distant lands at once frightening and thrilling because he felt a newness inside each time. Beinir was only able to return on account of Melsha, an old woman who lived on the second floor of the chancel.

“I knew I was blessed before it happened,” Beinir said, grinning. He squinted at her for a moment before continuing. “I trained with the sword and shield from very young, sure. But one day, just before my age of stillness, I lied and told my mother that I had left our world. And she believed me, sent me off here with the ferryman.” He crossed his arms, causing his chest to bulge beneath his tunic. “So Melsha marked me before my first time. She’s how I make it back to our world.”

“How did you know?” Shara asked.

Beinir tilted his head to one side. “Didn’t you? How does anyone know anything about themselves?”

Shara said nothing.

“My father knew I would be a warrior, but I knew I would be a wayfarer. I knew it. I wasn’t going to sit still.”

#

The smithy was cold despite the sunlight and the burning forge, and Shara stood before the blacksmith, a round woman with silver hair and several teeth missing. “Hold out your arm,” she said.

“Why is this necessary?” Shara asked.

“Come on, then.”

“I—

“It’s what’s done, eh? Let’s go.”

Beinir gripped her shoulder. “Go on, girl. We all have one.”

The sibyl stood beside the blacksmith with a book in her hands, scribbling with a bone fragment. “Your story has scarcely begun.”

Shara thought of her father and mother and brother. She thought of the miller’s son with the crooked smile. He had asked her father to marry her, and it would have happened by now, had she not—

Shara set the leather thong between her teeth and held out her right arm. The blacksmith pulled the brand from the forge and doused it once in the slack tub before pressing it against the inside of Shara’s forearm. And she dropped the leather from her mouth, wailing into the cold daylight. The call of some bird above brought to her mind ideas of flying.

#

Shara had been among the roamers for months, and no one had yet asked her to travel. She feared expectations, as ever—the demands and duties, the unending assumptions of a world to which Shara never felt she belonged.

She trained with Beinir in sword and shield and axe, but did little else there. She walked the snow-covered garden and noticed a new boy had arrived. He stood with a roamer by the corner of the bell tower. A lone brambling winged out in the sky, blackened by the sun behind it.

“The boy was nearly killed,” the sibyl said, coming from behind her. Shara turned. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Killed?”

“He’s from the mainland, out past the red forest, and old modes still thrive there. They said he was working magic because his own mother had difficulty recognizing him. We know better, of course.”

Shara nodded. She glanced down at the marking on her forearm—the word TALA encircled and wreathed in errant threads or the hint of wind, or a snake. The flesh was still pink and healing. “It was like that for me, as well. My brother said I looked different afterward.”

“So you have told me,” the sibyl said, taking a deep breath. “God’s weave is perfect, child. We can’t always know what we see. But seeing ourselves in others—well.”

Shara squeezed her eyes closed and folded her arms. The air was clean and cold and smelled of nothing, Shara thought, the empty brightness of calm winter days in that place, free winds whistling down from the mountains around her. She imagined invisible gusts lifting her up and away. How a blessing could take her away.

#

IV: They Want Me to Go Now

She was roused in the night. The moon had not yet risen, the white threat of it tracing the line of mountains to the east, and the land was heavy with shadow and snow as Shara looked out from her cell window. She donned her slippers and left her room. She moved down the corridor and into the spiral stairwell, enjoying the soft shushing of her feet on the stone. Beinir had told her of the defensive reason for the narrowness of the stairwell, how no sword could be reasonably drawn and how fighting up those steps was near impossible.

As Shara came into the great hall, she spied a gathering of roamers by the high table, a fire burning in the hearth behind them. The sibyl stood up and waved Shara over. Beinir was seated at the table as well, the old skade too.

“It is almost time, child. Sit.” The sibyl gestured to an empty chair. There were bowls of round bread and cheese, grapes, a large goose and plates of berries and nuts. “Eat.”

“I’m not hungry,” Shara said. “I’m tired.”

“You’ll need your strength.”

Shara reached for the berries and set a few down onto her plate. She took a piece of bread.

“Our skade, Brother Leithem, has a special gift,” the sibyl said, “which brought him to us long ago. He will travel with you. There are others to teach in his absence, worry not. He will be able to keep you in place once you pass over.”

Shara looked at the bearded man, the one who had recited the tale by the fire in the courtyard months ago. She recalled the number of worlds she had heard sung of in childhood, and it had been more than the seven this man had mentioned. But Beinir assured her that it was all tradition, nothing more. Seven kinds of worlds according to their varieties, seven roads, the glade at the end—tales too far away to understand anymore.

“How will Brother Leithem travel with me?” Shara asked.

“Sister Melsha is not a wayfarer, but she has blessings of her own, yes? The power to summon wayfarers home. Well, Brother Leithem is both a wayfarer and an invoker—twice-blessed. He’ll anchor you until it is time for your return.”

“What if—I mean, what do I do when I get there?” Shara asked.

“Brother Leithem has the particulars, you will obey his command. You will remember our ways and keep them. Until we call you back.”

“For what purpose?” Shara worried she might appear ungrateful. But she wasn’t ready. “What is it I am to learn?”

The sibyl clasped her hands in front of her. “I can see the world you will go to next. Even now as we sit here, it rounds upon our own. It is nothing like the one you visited before. Others of our order await you there.”

“But, what if—”

“What we need is for you to keep our ways. To push them out into other worlds. Learn, prepare, find glory in those worlds and bring back stories. God wants all our stories. The sagas grow and grow, child. They teem with our accounts, and they await yours.”

Shara glanced at Beinir. “How long before I must go?”

“This is what you have been waiting for, is it not? Yes. You will go now and remain until we call you back. You will be observed, worry not, child.”

They ate in the dim firelight and spoke little more. Afterward, Beinir joined Shara in the courtyard. The night remained black and moonless.

“When you went, what did they require of you?” Shara asked.

“Same as they’ll require of you,” Beinir said, his boots crunching in the snow. “Twice a year they let me go and when they bring me back, I have stories to give them.”

“What kinds of stories?”

“You can’t imagine.” He tapped the sword on his hip.

“Please,” she said.

Beinir stopped walking and turned to stare at Shara. The darkness of his eyes in only starlight reminded her of the Donar. “I’m particularly drawn to lost causes,” he said. “When they present anyway. I have swam in the deepest seas with clothing that fed me each breath. I have clashed in battles with spears. I have fought in wars with beams of light. I have nurtured children in the night as they coughed their last. I have ridden the wind in a basket and in rooms that fly. I have fed the poor and managed the injured, loved many in worlds with rules I somehow understood but struggle now to recall—but for the sagas.”

“Loved?” Shara said. She hadn’t meant to say it.

“Yes, I have loved. Have you not?”

“Never.”

“Oh, it will come, I assure you.”

Shara looked down at her feet. “I don’t think it’s in me. To love that way. And I tire of everyone’s need for it.”

Beinir tilted his head but said nothing.

“I suppose this is goodbye,” Shara said. “You’ve been kind to me.”

Beinir inhaled through his nose, the wind whipping his hair. “I knew the moment you arrived you were no wayfarer.”

Shara opened her mouth, the cold air drying her throat. “I—”

He reached out and gripped her wrist. “I know what you would say but hear me first. I am bound by the solstices, true. But I have also a gift which I have not shared. Not with the sibyl or any other. That old skade’s not the only twice-blessed around here.”

Shara blinked. She turned to look behind and around them. “Why did you not—”

“I do not see blessings, though there are those who can. None here now, fortunately for you. I suppose it is simply obvious. But—your lie was so specific. Tell me.”

Shara stepped closer to Beinir, keeping her voice low. “There was a boy in my village, the miller’s son. He fancied me.”

“Of course he did.”

“He’s the one who traveled.” She rubbed her hands together. “But he didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to join the roamers. He said he loved me, that he wanted to marry me. He’d already asked my father for my hand.” Shara lowered her eyes. “He told me everything about the other world. I witnessed the newness of his face myself and he told me of the mixing of lives and memory. And I took it all for my own. I convinced him to let me go in his stead, to say nothing.”

“Poor fool,” Beinir said. “He’ll land himself in trouble without help, mark me. And the storm paw?”

“He said he left the world after he used the miller’s thumb. He rubbed the meal between his finger and thumb, like his father, checking for fineness. He’d only just reached the age of stillness, so it was the first his father had allowed it. And I had just learned the storm paw from my father.”

“Age of stillness, bah. Everyone knows blessings come when they come.”

“I thought I’d have found my own by now. Like you, I know I’m a wayfarer.”

Beinir gazed at the stars, the speckled courses up there like bright waterways. “I might have fibbed myself, forgive me. I stumbled upon my own gift, to tell it true. Anyway, you were so pitiful. I hoped to draw you out. To let you know you could trust me.” He rolled his shoulders, better settling the cloak around his jerkin. “I’m sure you’ll find your way. Even so, fortunately for you, I’m twice-blessed, right? See—when I go, I can take another with me.”

Shara frowned. The cold was becoming too much. “I don’t—but they want me to go now. And you can only—”

“Do you not know, girl?” he said, holding his hands out to both sides.

“Don’t call me girl.”

Beinir laughed, sniffling a bit. “Yes, fine. Forgive me.” His smile was wild and boyish. “I’ve been shielding you from the sibyl this whole time, putting her off your scent. The winter solstice, Shara. It’s upon us.”

The upper rim of the moon shone from the horizon and was exceeding. Snow blew up from the ground into Shara’s face and stuck in the fur of Beinir’s cloak. The sibyl stood nearby and Brother Leithem too, a throng of roamers and Beinir and Shara in that dark courtyard standing listless as the time came and went. Those for the starways left shadows behind them, veiled reflections in their wake. And some small breath to suppose they’d ever been.

###

Released: January 15, 2022

Josh Eure is a fiction and non-fiction writer and winner of Asimov’s Dell Award and Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net. Full Bio