Chapter 2
Smack and Tear
Waimbrill quickly came to know the entire province. Most of the population lived in the city, with the remainder scattered on the plateau in the shadow of the five mountains that loomed like lumbering giants over the region. Villages dotted the plains between the mountains and the lake. The people in these habitations were mostly human, with a smattering of elves and other races.
A few hundred dwarves and gnomes, insular and clannish folk who brought their dead to Waimbrill rather than invite an outsider into their homes, lived in the mountains. Rainids - frog-like humanoids who stood taller than humans, but leaner, and longer-limbed by far - were a large part of Crikland’s population. The lake itself was home to tribes of green-skinned pond rainids, and their blue-skinned mountain-dwelling cousins populated the peaks, their battle prowess and barbarism making them legend among the town-dwellers, so Waimbrill heard much about them before he ever met any. Their skin was the color of a cloudless summer sky, and they were shorter and huskier than other rainids. They had wide eyes, thick nostrils with no nose, and a broad toothless mouth. Three of them came to him one day, dressed in thick furs and carrying spears outfitted with dangling bits of bone and colorful stones. The leader of the trio, who introduced himself as Sharradrir, wore armor of tanned bearskin, intricately stitched with arcane symbols.
An elder woman had died in her sleep, and they needed Waimbrill to come with them. He sighed and nodded, and prepared for a hike.
The rainids walked quickly, Waimbrill struggling to keep up. When they came to the base of Mt. Rekkerkem, Sharradrir said, “Mortiss Waimbrill, it would take you many hours or days to climb to where we must go, but I can carry you there swiftly.”
The chief warrior saw that Waimbrill was hesitant and assured him he would be safe. “Leaping is a particular skill of the warriors of my tribe,” Sharradrir said, his pride evident in his voice.
Waimbrill agreed, and climbed onto the back of the rainid, clutching his rough, leather-armored shoulders.
The first jump was so flabbergasting Waimbrill almost let go. They were under a ledge, and he assumed that was where Sharradrir would jump. But instead he leapt some seventy feet straight up, and landed on a sheer rock wall, clinging to, it seemed, nothing. Waimbrill gasped, his heart dropping as he saw that he was supported only by the grunting Sharradrir’s long toes and fingers, which gripped the smooth stone surface. They were stationary for a moment, but Waimbrill fell in his own mind a hundred times in that second, and then Sharradrir leapt again, landing on a high shelf.
“Hold on tight,” Sharradrir said, and Waimbrill could hear the grin in his voice.
He leapt again, and they stayed aloft so long Waimbrill felt like he was flying. They landed this time on an upwardly sloping surface, and Waimbrill had to wrap his legs around Sharradrir’s torso to keep from dangling feet first, suspended hundreds of feet above a rocky cliff wall. Waimbrill felt sure he would vomit from fear, intestines churning as his muscles screamed that he was imminently plummeting to a splattering death. Sharradrir leapt from face to face, chortling and reassuring Waimbrill as he went. He didn’t stop, jumping instantly after each landing. Waimbrill became dizzy and disoriented from the constant jostling and bouncing.
His tightly clenched, bone-white fingers tingled with tension by the time he dismounted. It was cold this high, and Waimbrill had never gathered his breath from his initial exhilaration. He stumbled, and Sharradrir supported him as he panted and leaned forward to rest against a boulder.
Catching a glimpse of the view from his location, Waimbrill’s breath caught in his throat, and panic welled in his mind. He precariously teetered, dropped to his knees and held onto the rock beneath him like a child clutching at its mother. A field of green lay in front of him, crisscrossed with azure ribbons of rivers meandering from the mountains to the lake, where they gathered and mixed with its deep, dark waters before flowing south, off the edge of the plateau into the kingdoms beyond. The landmarks he could have most easily recognized, the trees and roads, clusters of farmhouses, and creeks and ponds, were smoothed over with distance and invisibly small. The wind roared and ripped across his face, so strong it drained his breath as the air fled from his throat faster than his lungs could inflate. He wondered if he never felt wind like this before because he had been sheltered in his family’s estate and the monastery, or if there simply was no wind that paralleled the gusts that smacked and tore at him now.
When he realized the rainids were waiting for him, Waimbrill wobbled to his feet. His knees felt like the jellied berries his family made for the winter months, and he couldn’t catch his breath.
Sharradrir placed a leathery-skinned hand on his shoulder and said, “Relax. Humans have trouble breathing the air this high. We shall walk slowly.” He turned to the other rainids and said, “Go on yourselves, and I will bring him.”
They stretched their wide lipless mouths into what Waimbrill could only assume was a sneer, then hurried ahead. Sharradrir walked with Waimbrill and offered support when the trail grew rough.
They soon reached a large hut, sheltered from the wind by a high wall. Heavily armed and brightly adorned guards stood outside. Sharradrir motioned for him to enter.
Inside, it smelled of musty incense and melted snow. Mounted bear skins and feathered, painted drums decorated the smooth wooden walls. Waimbrill shivered as his chill dwindled in the fire-heated hut, and he bowed nervously in greeting to the elder rainids, their skin wrinkled beneath thick robes and crowns.
The dead woman, her belly fat and mouth wide, lay on a bed, four supplicants praying around her body. They rose and gestured for Waimbrill to approach. He heard them chitter in their own language. He stood before the deceased rainid, took a deep breath and recited the High Prayer. His head reared back, nose elongating and hardening into a vulture beak, and then it was done, and the rainid cleaved. Her brain was thinner, more watery and saltier than the human brains he was used to, but her grief assaulted his body like an avalanche just the same. Waimbrill awkwardly noted that the rainids were ignoring him and acting out a mourning ritual he didn’t know. Part of his training was in understanding, observing and respecting the funerary arts, but he was not versed in the practices of these tribes.
A rainid woman entered, covered in thick furs and bejeweled with large sapphires, pale periwinkle skin marked with regal wrinkles and cold eyes. The other rainids stopped chanting, and prostrated before her.
“Greetings, Mortiss...” she said, resonant contralto trailing off, waiting for him to supply his name.
He stood in awe at her majesty, then stammered, “W-Waimbrill.”
“I thank you, Mortiss Waimbrill, for serving our lord. I am Temendra, the Rowager of all the rainids of these mountains, and I have come to pay my respects to the woman thou hast graciously cleaved. She was Denaavi of Ethena, mother of Chief Randannasto, daughter of Lady-Mother Ellabora and Chief Vintadiim of the Gannasha tribe of Mt. Sedge-“
She continued listing the decedent’s lineage, and Waimbrill smiled and nodded politely.
“A feast hath begun, Mortiss Waimbrill, as is customary after the death of such an elder among us. All of our tribesmen shall attend, to mourn her death and celebrate her life. As her claine, ye are invited to be our guest of honor,” she said.
Waimbrill agreed, and she smiled a comforting grin that warmed his bones and cleared the waves of doubt and grief that lapped at his mind. She turned to the bowing rainids, and spoke in their language, its booming clicks and guttural grunts alien and discordant. He groaned inwardly as he realized he had agreed to a feast, and he wondered what snow rainids ate.