Thick clouds of incense spiral and dance upward in the air, released from the coals burning in the bowls surrounding the altar, as Elmariyë prostrates herself on the cold stone floor of the temple. She inhales the strong and pungent scent, richness released through burning flame, and thinks back on the path she walked to come to this place. Yet as important as the past is, and the journey, she is here now, devoting her life now forevermore to the cause of immortal love, to the presence and work of the goddess in the world. The voices of her companions, the priests and priestesses of the temple, and the sages, echo in song around her, and she lets go of the multiplicity of thoughts and memories. Instead, she tries simply to sink into the fullness of the moment as it encompasses her, reverberating with an immensity of silent sound, made tangible in the voices surrounding her and in the sweet scent of the motherly maker and caregiver, whose odor is symbolized in the inflamed substance rising to the heavens.
Immersed as she is in restful thought beyond words, she is stirred and surprised when words are spoken near to her, intoned in a soft female voice:
"Rise now, child of Niraniel, and gaze with eyes of heart upon the new dawn of life. Listen with ears of spirit to the voice of the great mother. Feel the intangible love and taste the sweet banquet of her benevolence. And speak back in response, if you truly desire this. You have heard, you have known, and now you dedicate yourself to her and to bringing her light into the darkness of this world, where it is often so forgotten and scorned."
At these words, Elmariyë rises to her knees and, slowly and with a deep sense of intermingled gratitude and trepidation, raises her eyes before her to the statue of the great mother, the goddess of love, compassion, and fecundity, Niraniel. In a stance of undying receptivity the goddess stands, with face rapt upward to the light and eyes gently open; but this receptivity of the great mother is also her benevolent generosity to all humankind poured out through her open hands, palms upraised as if offering, surrendering, the gifts that she bears within to all those who approach her in their need.
"Elmariyë of Telonis," a male voice that she knows well quietly begins, "you have been with us now for two years, and you have learned and progressed in the way of the mother. Now we send you out to spread her light far and wide. Bring her always in your heart, against your breast, confident that knowing her is the greatest boon, and that one cannot share without this knowing of the heart."
With this, the man, clothed in dark robes, approaches Elmariyë, his aged face warm in the candlelight, his wrinkles deep and yet soft, as if witnesses to his wisdom and kindliness, and he gestures for her to bend her head. As she does so, he slips around her neck an amulet, crafted with the image of Niraniel, a pattern of interlaced threads of wrought metal conjoining in a way that the end and the beginning meet and are never parted, a sign that she is the interweaver of destinies and of lives in love from the beginning to the end.
The ceremony comes to its final moment with the voices of all being raised in song, giving voice to the words of an ancient hymn, a hymn mysterious in its depth and yet simple, as all true wisdom is, given to the simple of heart.
Niraniel, Niraniel, first and chosen daughter of Eldaru,
beloved one who teaches every heart to love,
come to us and show us the way that is good and true;
beyond the shadows and darkness of life, let us move,
free and joyful in the realm of light, pure and holy,
and bring this light to every lost and hurting heart.
And then in the ancient tongue:
Niranyë, Niranyë, belía porá en séka nu El-dáru,
seïka ona qua illüa corá mon eliáru,
vená a noá ya dirá noaë eliána ya fundála;
medlúr ya obscúr surána passá, tratá noë,
liëne ya haláne illá regó en, sanó ya hasïo,
ya dirá aná illá corán derén ya ungdén moën.
After the ceremony is concluded, all of those present retreat to the atrium for a humble celebration among the twisting vines that clothe the wooden pillars and the gurgling water of the fountain in the center of the small but surprisingly spacious room. More songs are sung, and numerous regional treats are offered to the guests, who are few in number but devoted. The town of Ristfand, southernmost on the continent, is home to numerous sprawling vineyards and farms of holly-lock and hospitable also to the cattle rancher and shepherd and the tender of wylana (a bird resembling a chicken, though three times its size and with feathers of radiant colors, bearing eggs both larger and more frequent). Lying near to Nelsen Bay in a wide coniferous valley along the edge of the Yjind Mountains, the climate in this region differs greatly from the mountainous lands cradling her on the west or the desolate and rocky lands to the north, where the hardy Telmerins nonetheless do not fail to help the land to yield its fruit and to sustain their humble way of life.
Elmariyë has been in this town for almost three years, having departed from her family's home nestled deep in the mountains of Yjind, where she grew up amid love and toil, amid poverty and the bounty of the land that sustained them, the cold wind sweeping down from the mountains and the family hearth burning almost without cease to ward off the cold and to feed the family who would gather round it.
She came with determined mind and heart and worked at an inn for close upon a year before being accepted into the temple of the great mother. And now on this day, two years since her entrance, after so many joyful blessings and healing trials, she is eager to walk whatever path may be laid out before her. She may be young, not yet in her twenty-sixth year, but she has experienced and weathered much and has drunk deeply since her youth of the wisdom of the land, whispering in her ears continually, and of the wisdom of the tender mother who speaks most clearly to those who are most humble.
"Dear Elmariyë, you have our congratulations and well-wishes as you begin your new life," says another member of the temple, with his arm interlocked with that of his wife. "Have you received word of where it is the grandmaster wishes you to travel?"
"I have not received word, Endrik," Elmariyë replies, with a bow of her head, "and thank you for your wishes."
"I would hope you get to travel to the capital city of Brug'hil. It is exquisite. Perhaps if the grandmaster is not decided, I may suggest it."
"Suggest it you may, but I am not looking for exquisite journeys. There will be beauty enough wherever I may be."
"Ah, but none like the capital! You should see the great citadel of Merks Mirjorn and the temple of the seven at its height. Nowhere in the world is there such masterful exhibition of the capable work of human hands!"
"Do not our traditions say that 'Niraniel prefers the beauty of nature to all the artifice of man, without despising the latter'?"
"Of course you are right, young one," replies Endrik, "but our traditions also say that Niraniel is one of the divines, who has come to counteract the power of the fallen one. But other traditions say that she is a mere mortal, raised to the status of reverence by the divines and favored by them with a status not unlike their own."
"I wish not to argue with you, my friend," Elmariyë responds quietly. "Some say that Niraniel is yet to come and that our worship of her expresses but our longing for a gift yet to be given from the origin of all the divine and human orders."
Endrik rejoins, with very little kindness in his eyes, "And why would we worship what is yet to come, as if we could know it now?"
With this, and to Elmariyë's great relief, Endrik ends the conversation and turns, with his wife still silently beside him, to another part of the room and engages in other conversations. Always uncomfortable with crowds, particularly those in which she is a special participant, Elmariyë herself withdraws to a corner of the room hidden in shadows, far from the large brazier that illumines the chamber.
She has only begun to relax and to breathe more deeply, however, when the grandmaster himself, Cirien Lorjies, a man of venerable stature with a long white beard and glistening blue eyes, approaches her. It was he who invested her and laid upon her neck the amulet of Niraniel during the ceremony.
"I suppose that our friend Endrik tried to suggest where I should be sending you?" he says quietly.
"Indeed," Elmariyë replies, reminding herself that Cirien is the gentlest of gentle men and that he wears the robes of his office with as much disinterested humility as many unjustly feel in his presence—until, that is, they truly get to know him and the grace and serenity with which he ministers to all entrusted to his care. He is not a man to lean on the staff of his role as if it gave him leverage over others; though in this respect, he is sadly an exception among the order of the temple leaders and often finds himself in conflict with them both in his personal behavior and in his inclinations for the care of the temple and its service to all.
"Well, I assure you," continues Cirien, rousing Elmariyë from her thoughts, "that I have not yet decided where I wish to send you. I am confident, though, that your heart will be a gift to all with whom you come in contact."
"Thank you for your kind words."
"You do not mind staying here in Ristfand for a while longer, do you?"
"No, I do not."
"I expected as much," Cirien replies, his eyes scanning the crowd of people filling the room, though somehow looking deeper, to what is visible only to the eyes of the heart. "Do you have a wish?"
"A wish?" Elmariyë asks.
"About where you would like to go?"
"Is that not your decision?"
"Yes, but it is a decision concerning you, my child. Never let your service be an excuse to neglect the gift of your own being and life. You must first live, and always live, in the fullness of your own heart. Only from the fullness of your heart can you truly give our mother's benevolence to others."
"I have not thought much about it," answers Elmariyë quietly, after a pause. "Where I would like to be, I mean. In fact, to tell you the truth, it is like my future is shrouded in mystery, and I cannot even make out the slightest path."
"It is often so for all of us," Cirien says. "But I must say that I experience the same thing, in your regard, when I think of where best to assign you. I see nothing of what the future holds for you. The darkness surrounding it is immeasurably thick and obscure. I know not what to make of it. This is why I think it is important to wait, to listen, for what may be unveiled before us with the passage of time."
"Yes, I think that is wise," Elmariyë replies, "and I am willing to wait. I am quite content here."
Cirien chuckles softly to this remark. "Yes, yes, I suppose you are. Though perhaps," he adds, turning and looking into her eyes, "you would like to visit your family for a time?"
"Truly?"
"Truly. If it is a wish of yours, I will arrange provisions and a horse, and you may stay for a few months or until something more is given us to know."
"It would be a wonderful thing to visit, particularly this time of year."
† † †
Within a matter of two days, Elmariyë is leading a paint horse by the bridle through the cobbled streets of the city, a small pack tied behind the saddle, and another over her own shoulders. Her long auburn hair is braided back from her temples along the side of her head and tied at the back, falling full down her shoulders. She wears a simple garb of tan, undyed woolen fabric, with a leather jerkin strung together at the front and, over it all, a heavy fur cloak pulled tight around her shoulders and almost sweeping the ground behind her as she walks.
It is early morning, just after sunrise, and the stillness of night clings still to the streets, interrupted only by a few laborers about their business, setting up stalls full of seasonal vegetables, salted and preserved meats freshly hunted or slaughtered, or handicrafts of wood, cloth, skins, or basketwork. Yet even as she walks, the hum of movement and conversation begins to break the quiet air, though the latter still hangs about in the crevices between the tall half-timber buildings, lingering around the heavy stone of the abodes of the more well-to-do, and abiding especially in the simple and yet elegant structure of the temple of Niraniel, which lies directly behind Elmariyë at the rear of a court of smooth stonework with a thin cavern-fed stream flowing to either side as it makes its way to a greater convergence to the south of the city, whence it flows into the sea.
Ristfand is one of the only settlements in Telmerion that has retained a semblance of normalcy and prosperity amidst the chaos of the civil war and the mysterious changes in the weather, in which a cold and wet landscape has become inexplicably more so, delaying the onset of spring now by two months and still waiting for the arrival of warmth and the blossoming of the first flowers. Elmariyë looks around and is reminded of this, as even in the beginning of the month of Meldron none of the usual vegetables are for sale, but only the hardy and late-harvest potatoes and merry-heather roots and a few carrots and lesser herbs. Nonetheless, the people here have not yet known, nor are yet close to suffering, the poverty of true famine, even if diverse supplies and goods, including foodstuffs, are more rare than they have been in generations. This is sadly not true for the smaller settlements to the north, west, and east, in which the lives and material well-being of the people are so deeply tied up with the land and with the unpredictable changing of the weather and the other forces at work beyond human control and ken.
If she is honest with herself, it is to places such as these that Elmariyë would wish to go to bring the light of Niraniel: places of poverty and hardship, of pain and suffering, of human want crying out for the divine abundance. But she knows that her destiny is not in her own hands alone, and she awaits the gift of grace that will show the way and bring to flourish the good that she cannot bring about by her own efforts. Regardless, the larger settlements and cities of Telmerion have problems of their own, often just as dire as the want for food or material goods. The ten to twelve thousand inhabitants of Ristfand in fact live in the orbit of a great spiral of injustice and thievery, either in participation in it or in rebellion against it, or, as in the case of most persons, in a blind-eyed tolerance to it after years of long suffering and endurance of the corruption under the surface of the city. This injustice is not of the viscerally violent and murderously malevolent kind as practiced by the marauders and brigands who roam about the land attacking and pillaging, but it is thievery and malice nonetheless. Relihim the brigands are called, in a derivation of the old tongue. And Elmariyë has heard Cirien speak of those swimming the current of corruption under the apparently clean garment of the city as the "Relihim of Ristfand." A fitting name and very telling. For even if the garment differs, the stench is the same.
As Elmariyë comes to the gate of the city, she turns back for a moment, her mind filled with thoughts of the goodness and beauty that she has encountered here, and yet also of the pain and human misery that are also here concealed, and the malice as well. She offers a silent prayer and sighs deeply in compassion and longing, part of her wishing to remain in the city, to serve the light in the midst of so much darkness, even as another part of her enthusiastically looks forward to the visit with her family.
And with this, she turns, lifts herself up, and climbs into the saddle of the horse. Gripping the reins in her hands, she presses firmly against the horse's flanks with her knees and heels, "Giddy up, Fenarion," and the horse responds by moving forward, first at a walk and then at a gentle trot. Elmariyë experiences its strong and muscular body move beneath her with restrained intensity, She has loved horses for as long as she can remember, spending a large part of her free time tending to the mares owned by her father or riding them for hours along the mountainous trails branching off from their homestead, the wind in her hair and the sun on her back. Indeed, as she rides, it feels almost as if she is riding on the wind itself, or perhaps upon the very foundations of the earth, abiding in perpetual stability and continual movement. And yet now, as the massive cut stones of the curtain wall of Ristfand recede into the distance behind her, whether she is riding upon the wind itself or not, the journey home will be a long one. But she looks forward to it, as the rolling grassland cloaked in trees and heather, dancing and glistening in the morning sun, greets her in radiant beauty, and after that, the rocky hills await, in a gradual ascent to the lower steppe and then jagged crags of the Yjind Mountains.
Elmariyë prays for a safe journey, free from brigands and beasts, and feels a slight trepidation intermingling with her joy and excitement, aware that she travels alone. In terms of weaponry, she is not heavily equipped; it is not her part to be so, and neither is she trained. A short bow is tied to the pack on the horse, and with it a quiver full of arrows, and on Elmariyë's own belt, a long hunting knife in a leather scabbard. In other words, she is well armed for killing, dressing, and skinning a deer or other wild beast, but for little more than that. And this is only fitting, as it has never been the part of the servants of Niraniel to wield death against humankind for whatever reason, though fighting in self-defense is in no manner forbidden and left to the prudent discernment of each person.
Despite the danger of the roads and the tumultuous state of Telmerion, Elmariyë feels in the most part secure and at rest, and she easily dismisses the slight surge of fear at riding home alone and unattended. She instead occupies herself with drinking in the sights and sounds she encounters along the way, more brown and lifeless than usual at this time of year but beautiful nonetheless. For the trees dot the landscape with a kind of poetry, standing as silent sentinels over the earth, with their hidden roots plunging deep into her bosom and drinking of her life, and their branches stretched to the heavens, all the more expansively the more they have allowed themselves to sink into the humble depths of the soil. Aspen, poplar, and beech, with a few large oak here and there, intermingle in great diversity, still mostly leafless but majestic nonetheless in their nudity; and among these stand tall and wide the fully-pined spruces and junipers, less in number but more vibrant in color.
Elmariyë rides like this without stop until the sun is high in the sky and the air has warmed significantly, though without entirely dispelling the chill. This is not a bother, though, because the atmosphere is still and quiet, with hardly a whisper of wind, and the cold only enhances the sense of reverberating quiet that cloaks the land and of the mysterious whispers of life that inhabit the woods and sing among the trees. Intermittently the chirping of small birds, passerines, warblers, or finches, or the calling of a lark, or even the deep voice of a moose, is heard, breaking the stillness, or perhaps better, intermingling with it. The fullness of sound-laden silence makes Elmariyë think that perhaps she is hearing some distant echo, however imperfect, of the silent song by which the gods first sang Ierendal into existence. She dismounts from the horse in the early afternoon and ties him to the nearest tree by the harness. After this, pulling a satchel out of her pack, she makes herself comfortable at the foot of a large oak and begins to eat a simple meal of rye bread and goat cheese, with a few nuts.
She cannot help feeling guilty for having enough food to eat when so many go hungry, and this, despite her teachers' continual insistence that she feel rather grateful, as the poverty of others beside her own sufficiency should not stir guilt but rather thankfulness and compassion and active concern for them in their need. She doesn't quite understand, at least on the level of the heart, and can only surrender to the mystery, as she has learned to do, indeed, with so many parts of life. There are many forces at work greater than the human mind can comprehend, and to try to fit them into the mind is an impossible task; but to stand before them in wonder or in lament, in contemplation and receptivity, does no harm but is the very fabric of life and love. Thus she does not mind feeling guilty if it means her heart is still alive to her brothers and sisters, even if there is very little effectively that she can do for them in this moment. Hopefully, as time passes, she will learn of more ways to be concretely at their service.
After her small meal, she takes a long drink from a waterskin tied at her waist and cherishes the subtle leathery taste that it affords her—something that she has always liked about travel. Before rising and continuing on the road, she leans her head back against the trunk of the tree and closes her eyes. She hears at first nothing but the dense silence of the woods, interrupted only by the song of birds and the whisper of wind in the canopy of trees, but after a few moments she hears also the distant call of a wolf, answered from a different part of the woods by another. The distance between the two calls awakens in Elmariyë a vivid sense of the wide space that surrounds her on every side, a sprawling, undulating lowland at the foot of the range of mountains, with rolling hills and numerous crevices in which trickle numerous little streams as the land descends to fjords that meet the swelling sea as it washes against the rocky shores of Nelsen bay.
She calls to mind the simple farewells spoken this morning and the embraces of her two primary mentors, the young priest Ridrej, his face only beginning to show signs of age, and the eighty-year-old scholar, Welíya, her face clothed in wrinkles, and her hands, too, like the land's surface covered in valleys and rivers and deep furrows, but still able to hold a book and to clasp themselves in prayer, her sole two desires. Their eyes look out at her even now in memory, glistening with a gentleness that she has come to know and to love. Her companions in the order had also been present at the sending-off, many still dressed in their night garments, with bedraggled hair or with a night-cap still tied around the ears.
"We wish you well on your journey," Ridrej had said, "and a safe return. May you find your family well and your time with them a blessing."
Welíya had handed Elmariyë a small item wrapped in paper and tied with string. "This is for your parents. Give it to them as a gift from us upon your arrival." And, with a glisten in her eyes and a subtle smile illuminating her face, "This," she had continued, "is for your siblings." Elmariyë had laughed as the old woman placed into her palm a handful of sweet candies made from distilled tree sap, clove, and cinnamon—the family's favorite, she had once mentioned off-hand over a year ago in a conversation.
"You remembered!" she had exclaimed.
Welíya just smiled and said, "I have learned that it is important to remember the littlest of things, for often the deepest things are hidden within them."
"Thank you very much, all of you," Elmariyë said and looked into the faces of all around her before turning away for her departure.
With the emotions stirred from these memories, Elmariyë returns to the present and opens her eyes. The sun is peeking from behind low-hanging clouds, rippled and fast moving as if the waves of the sea had been painted in the sky, and casting a golden hue over the landscape. Fenarion neighs restlessly in his harness, ready to begin again.
"Yes, yes," Elmariyë says. "We have rested long enough; let us go."
She unties the horse and swings herself back into the saddle before setting off again to the west-northwest. It is only a matter of an hour or two before the land begins to rise before her and, beyond that, the peaks of mountains standing like sentinels at the meeting of earth and sky.