At some point I met the swordsmith Durat, who too had a quest with N�a: he desired to find the fabled sword of the hero Itanir Broken Mountain, who it is said cut the bed of the river bearing his name one day in battle with a terrible monster, which they tell me was a great dark dragon come down from the dayless caves of the Silence, a devouring ravening thrashing whirlwind of destruction that cut the First Forest in two and created the forests Ai and Ur and decimated the Spider people till even those who were left dwindled and died pining the loss of their their kith and kin. But, I digress. Durat wanted then to learn the swordsmith�s magic which now, many years hence, he is the undisputed master of, perhaps the greatest in the world, for though N�a is perhaps the knower of more secrets than he, she was never a maker of new things, but only a collector of antiquities, and he was then as willing to brave the fearsome rumours of her magics as I to reach our goal.

And so, we set out into the forest, searching for the sorceress. But we lost our way, and soon we found ourselves awakening in the hold of a ship. It came to me that I had been hearing the singing of the sea through the darkness of the trees for days now, and that that mysterious scent must have been the salt tang of the air, though till then I did not know it. Around us were other men like ourselves, imprisoned by some traders who were in need of oarsmen. It seemed we were being kept in the hold till we were out of sight of land, to discourage escape attempts.
�Durat, what do you think of this?�'

The storyteller put down his cup and wrapped himself in his cloak. The sun was painting the western sky.
posted by Shreyas Sampat at 12:40 AM

"Perhaps it's time to retire for the night, wouldn't you agree, O sorceress?" he said.
"Indeed, so it seems to be. Have you a place to stay the night, Storyteller?"
"I do. Thank you for asking, though. Perhaps I can accept your hospitality another time."
"Yes. Goodnight."
I rose to my feet and began to gather the things I had set out for the evening meal. Afterwards, I wandered through the marketplace, marvelling at the beauty of the world and its people and how the sunlight in its celebration of the evening painted over everything in warm tones of joy. Clouds and darkness awaited eagerly in the east while light fled the sky.

Now, for those of you who d�dn't see the story begin, this is how it does:
Some definitions:

Sarastih is the goddess of writing.
Irandd�n are a type of psychotropic flower used as a magical tool by sorcerers.
Eska R�n� is a collection of stories of the Dragonfly people that are held as holy writ.
Nur is the goddess that created the world. The other gods are her children.
Basically any animal name referred to as a collective noun, and capitalized, refers to one of the cultures that populates the world. So far only Dragonfly and their close relatives the Dragon have appeared, but soon to be revealed are representatives of Spider, Antelope, and perhaps Cougar or Lynx. They are referred to as clans.

On spelling:
See the Nrit Phonology page for any weird-looking Dragonfly names like N�a and Xormalih. Other names will be rendered in Nrit-style orthography as well, or as Englisk, as in the Dragon Light-of-My-Eyes.

Sarastih's Journals: Market Day
I was wandering the market today, Journal.
It's an interesting place. Full of color and scent and sound.
Sound.
Like the sound of voices. Natlihah's people have beautiful voices. I met this wonderful old man, and he told me a story. It went something like this:

Long ago, when the world was still new, and the stars burned bright in the sky, there was a princess. This princess was no ordinary princess. Back then proper princesses didn't fence, or fly gliders, or climb cliffs, or sail ships. Kanjan� wasn't a proper princess.
One day, she had a fight with her father, and sailed off in Swift Storm, her ship.
"Dear, shouldn't we have the guards search for her?" asked her mother the queen.
"No. You know as well as I do that her ship's the fastest one in our fleet, and even if we could catch her, if she lands and escapes we'll never find her. Let her come back in her own time," replied the king.
"If you say so."

Several weeks later, Kanjan� had still not returned. "Where is my daughter?!" shouted the queen. "She never runs off for this long. Send out a search!" The court rushed to send off their sailors and trackers to look for her by land, sea, and air.

Soon one returned. Her ship had been found, drifting toward shore, unmanned and empty of provisions and tools. The queen was devastated. The king's health had slowly been declining, you see, and she had some deep fear that she'd be the only one left.

The next day, the queen climbed to the very top of the highest tower of the royal palace. Days and days she climbed, stair after stair after endless, merciless stair, till she reached the ultimate summit, and out of its windows she could see all of her kingdom laid out around her, and the seas beyond that. Still, she saw no sign of her daughter. So she wrote a letter, and flew it down to the earth on a kite. So it read:

Children,
I shall not leave this place till my daughter Kanjan� is returned. The winds will bring me food and water. I am no small sorceress, fear not for me. But know that without we two, the kingdom is doomed to a long and bloody succession war. My husband the king is no longer be fit to rule. In our absence, our adviser Xormalih will rule in our stead. Let it be declared all round the land that the rescuer of my child, from whatever danger has taken her, will be rewarded handsomely and forever remembered.
Your Queen.

Soon enough, the kingdom was in an uproar. All manner of brash young noble men and women fled to the far reaches of the world, hoping for word of the Lost Princess, as she came to be called. Some returned. Many did not.

One of these brash young men was a young duke named Rustam Paper Sword. He didn't even have the funds to buy a ship, let alone crew one, and so he set out on foot, with his trusty horse. Far into the Mountains of Silence they travelled, into the darkness of the Forest Ur.

One evening, while Rustam was washing himself in a shady forest spring, a
voice called out to him.
"Rustam! Rustam!" Rustam stood and followed the voice.
He came upon a clearing, carpeted with soft moss and green in the forest twilight. A little man clothed in grass was standing on a
toadstool, looking up at him. "Rustam!"
"Who are you? Why do you know my name?" asked the young duke.
"That's none of your concern, little prince. It's come to be known that you're on a quest to return the Lost Princess."
Rustam sat down, intrigued.
"I didn't know that the forest spirits were so well informed. You'll forgive my ignorance, I hope. What concern of it is yours that I'm seeking a princess, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I won't forgive it, but I'll pretend to. The Forest is prepared to offer you certain assistances, because we have a certain stake in this matter that I'm not permitted to reveal." The little man also took a seat, and he pulled a knife and sharpening stone from a pocket, honing it as they spoke.
"I appreciate your offer. I perhaps might like to know what precisely assistance the Forest is offering me, though."
"I'm told that you're a warrior, not a magician. That will not do. We offer you the magic of the Tree itself, the first living thing to be touched by Grandmother Nur's sculpting hand." The man tugged on the tip of his knife; it stretched into a graceful willow-leaf sabre, glittering coolly in the halflight.
The prince's eyes widened. "You're offering a great deal of power there."
"We are. Are you prepared to accept?"
"I am. I seem to have no other choice; I'm told rescuing princesses is no easy task."
"Good. Your first lesson in magic is the lesson of knowledge; you must know how the world thinks, because thought shapes the world, and sorcery is only thought given power. Go find your horse. Blindfold yourself and untie him; unveil yourself when he stops walking." The little man jumped abruptly off the toadstool and skipped off into the undergrowth.
"Wait!" Rustam shook his head, and then followed his directions. It was eerie, being unable to see as the sounds of the forest slipped by; the scents of irandd�n and sweet fruits drifted through the air, birds sang dolorous songs, the light of day shifted and flickered and died.
Finally the horse stopped, and Rustam opened his eyes.
He stood in front of a strange house, raised on stilts and pierced through the centre by a tall, slender tree. The door was covered in patterned silver, in designs that Rustam knew from the edges of wizards' robes and the little dangling goodluck charms that peddlers sold at market. The designs, he noticed, climbed all over the house, and even down the tree, like twining vines of ink. The doors swung open, and out stepped the most beautiful sorceress in human memory.'
I suppressed a smile.
'Rustam walked up to the cottage door. "Hail, sorceress. The little man of the forest sent me to you, for what I know not."
She nodded, and murmured, "Come, Rustam. I've been expecting you."
They walked into the house together. As the witch shut the doors, candles in glittering crystal lanterns flared into life - amber, green, white, blue. The scent of irand� and cinnamon hung heavy in the air.
"We brought you here to teach you of your people. Here I've collected most of the stories in our world; you shall take the tales of the Dragonfly, Eska R�n� and common folktale alike, and learn them all by heart. Then, once you've proven to my satisfaction that you know them, the true magic begins. You may call me N�a, incidentally."
For moons and moons they worked; the sorceress's dusty leather-bound books soon became polished with the constant rubbing of hands. After a time, Rustam had learnt them all, and recopied them into his own books, books marked with the traditional Mask and Crown of Nur.
Then, N�a taught him what could be done with this power - Nur cast a mask into the Void and made it light; so any face can see in the dark: a man at night, a mask on the wall, a coin cast into an alleyway. She brought land to the sea with her footprints, so a man may walk on water, or call up stones upon which to break ships. And so on.
Once Rustam learnt this heart of sorcery, she sent him away with his books, and an empty book and pen to record his own tale.'

The storyteller paused and took a drink of water. I grinned.
'That was a masterful retelling, Lord Storyteller. Please, favour us with the rest.'
'It is a long tale, O Sorceress.'
'True. Perhaps we can have it over the evening meal?'
'That is a most excellent idea.'
I walked to my cart and took out a great basket, and served the man and the children who had gathered. I poured sweet wine, and the storyteller went on.
posted by Shreyas Sampat at 1:04 AM

Forgive the flaky pirate jargon; this is an early draft.

The next mornng I went to a bakery and bought some fresh break, and to the fruit vendor for fruit and juice.
Then I went to look for the storyteller. Today he'd found a lovely grotto in a park, a group of large rocks surrounding a pool, all ringed around with shady weeping trees that were just touched with sparks of red with the approaching autumn. Several of the children from the previous day had gathered round, and they were eagerly speculating on what Durat and Light-of-My-Eyes' next exploit would be, now that they'd been captured by these pirates, even though I knew most ofthem must have heard the story a hundred times before.
I sat down on a rock and told the children to help themselves to a snack. The storyteller looked at me questioningly.
"So, noble sorceress, you've returned. Children, shall we continue?" They all nodded eagerly.
He began:

"It doesn't look too bad", Durat replied. "I think we can come to some arrangement with the ship". He carved at some piece of wood absently. It was at that point that some member of the crew had come down into the hold to retrieve something, and Durat called out to him. "Ho, sailor! Have you any food on this leaky barge? We landsmen can't survive on only the wind and salt spray like you." I blinked, wondering what he was trying to do.
"You'll all get your meals come nightfall", the sailor growed. "No sooner."
"I can pay", Durat insisted I didm't think this was too likely; Durat had been roddeb and disarmed like the rest of us.
"What with? We robbed all you dry when we brought you in."
"I have something of an idea. Can I speak to your captain?"
"Cap'n Three Crowns has better things to do than talk to dirty prisoners about extra mealtimes they isn't going to get", the sailor snapped, "and even if he did we don't have no food spare."
"Perhaps I can see the first mate, then? I know where you good men might be able to find some more sailors, and some good cheap food as well. Perhaps even a nice private harbor for those special 'private' cargoes, if you'd like." Durat glanced back at me and winked.
"Listen, landlubber. I don't know if you're pullin' me anchor-chain, so we'll dice for it. If you win, you can speak to the first mate. If you don't, you miss dinner tonight."
"Fair enough. Has soeone got some dice? You know, good sailor, so we know that we're not cheating with our own dice."
I had to suppress a grin. You see, Durat's a much more skilled sorcerer than he lets on; the dice game was probably his own idea. We had happened to play a game last night, to decide who was to wash the dshes after dinner. Durat dug himself into dishwashing fr a week, because I cheated shamelessly, and I'm not much of a wizard. The dice are designed to me attuned to magic, you see, and they can be easily manipulated if you know the mental trick of it. I'll show you sometime. At any rate, I figured that he must have guessed it, and he was about to try them out of the poor sailor. "I do!" I called out. Durat trotted over and took the dicebad from me, and the two of them sat down at a table to play. The game didn't last long; I could feel the magic rippling round Durat as the dice fell from his hand. He was a subtle cheater; occasionally the game rolled in the sailor's favor, but inexorably Durat's score crept up higher than the other's.
Then the dice fell once more. For a moment, the dice fell in a attern that would have ended in Durat's favor, but then the dice leapt into the air and turned the game about. The sailor laughed.
"I see you know some magic as well", he said. "I suppose we shall have to make a new bet, because we both cheated.""
"But I won't bother you with the rest of the story tonight, Rusta. It's late. Get some sleep", said Light-of-My-Eyes at last, "because we've done eating and you have a big day tomorrow."
Little did Rustam know how true that was. The next morning, Light-of-My-Eyes woke Rustam slicing his pillow open with a sword, and all morning they fenced across the fields and throught the tents and along the dark mountain snowmelt streams and to the foothills of the mountains to thenorth. They traded blow for blow for a time; the stood still and poised like watchful hawks; they fenced slow and subtly like two starving snakes. And alweays and always, Rustam was beaten back and the Dragon would stop and smile and shout, "Again!"
And Rustam leapt to the battle again, their weapons would describe gleaming arcs in the air - Rustam's priceless, lovely swrd with its glorious smoky steel, and the Dragon with every weapon he could think of - swords and graceful spears and little throwing knives like butterflies, with mace and whistling scythe and staff hung with jingling bells, with willow branch and pebbles and a fisherman's cleaning knife on a string. All this and more, all defeated the hero Rustam. Then Light-of-My-Eyes took up brush and ink and with it wrote his name on Rustam, like a herder's mark, and this humiliation was the last.
"Stop!" shouted Rustam, and held up his hand in surrender. Light's cloak snaked by inches from his eyes, edged with blades of glass. Rustam collapsed to a seat on the stone where they stood while the Dragon looked around. They had wandered far from camp. The flowering fruit trees around them reminded Rustam of his home, a home where no man dared beat him in chess, let alone while fencing in earnest. A home he missed sorely.
"Master", said Rustam, "teach me. The words spilled from his mouth unmoved by any volition of his own. "The Forest gives you ore and a forge. Make of me a weapon worthy of the name of hero."
Light-of-My-Eyes nodded. "Then you understand your place. Good. We have much more to do." He bent and lifted Rustam to his feet. Together they began to walk home.
posted by Shreyas Sampat at 12:45 PM