The man raised a hand. “I’ll get to that.” He took a swallow, pausing to lick some of the spill off his wrist. “So this stranger starts up the forge and begins making weapons. These weren’t no ordinary ones either—they were magic. Swords that could cut through mature tree trunks with a single swoosh!” He sliced through the air, nearly spilling his drink again, and causing his wife to move farther away.

“The stranger then handed out the things he made: swords, spears, shields, helms, and the like to everyone in the village. So the next time the marauders came to demand their tribute, the villagers burst out of their homes, butchered all of them, and set fire to their ships. Afterward, the people asked the stranger who he was, and he told them an amazing story. He explained how he had lost the love of his daughter because of something awful that he’d done, but that she promised to forgive him if he proved himself worthy by going about and helping others to fix the world. If he did something worthy, she grants him a white feather as a token of her approval. He puts them in a satchel, and he says that when it’s full she will forgive him.” The man leaned across the table toward the girl and spoke so softly that if Farilane hadn’t been a myr she might have missed it. He said, “Just then, as the man was leaving the village, a thunderclap cracked in a clear blue sky and from it fell a white feather that landed in the stranger’s hand, proving his story true.”

“And did this stranger then claim to be the god Erebus?” the cynical man asked.

The husband frowned. “No, a Monk of Maribor visited the place only a few months later, and he put the pieces together.”

“So he never even gave his name, this god of swords and feathers?”

“Yeah, but it was obvious the god was in hiding, so he wouldn’t give his real name.”

“What name did he give?”

“He called himself Kile.”

Chapter 14: Sephryn

Chapter Fourteen
Sephryn

“There are a lot of people named Kile, Your Highness,” the scribe said as they left the public house and resumed their climb, slipping into the flow of the street traffic.

People on the right side of the road traveled uphill. Those on the left went down. Strange how everyone always fell into this pattern: groups following other similar groups until a flow manifested, but always an opposite flow establishing itself. Farilane began to wonder if it had anything to do with people at all. Maybe all life—all of nature—is confined to certain necessary patterns: one going this way, the other going that.