Six

Pyrà

It was impossible to imagine what Fay’dor might want of me. He was a man of few words, most too cryptic to decipher, and a gaze so piercing that most villagers avoided him. No one knew where he came from or how he got here. If there was no way out of the Mhor-Jenn, how had he found his way in? And why?

In a community as small and isolated as ours, there were innumerable theories, all regularly gossiped about over pots of stem tea or flagons of the bitter ooura ale brewed from the dun-colored flowers of a ubiquitous shrub so hardy that it grew where it wanted and refused all attempts to eliminate it. Some claimed Fay’dor was a malevolent spirit in human form who had come to worsen our already harsh lives; others argued that he was an agent of Prithi’s, come to improve our lot. To date, we had seen evidence of neither. Fay’dor kept to himself for the most part, yet in his own way he was as ubiquitous as the ooura bush. Wherever in the village I found myself, he seemed to be there too, though not standing in full view. Each time, I caught him from the corner of my eye, and he always seemed to be watching me. Kamela insisted I imagined it. I knew I didn’t.

Was Fay’dor a man? What man has eyes the color of the suns? And what man’s hands resemble more a clawed animal’s than a human’s? My experience of man and beast was admittedly limited. Of the former, I had only my neighbors to compare him with, and he looked like none of them. Of the latter, we had few here in the Mhor-Jenn. My stallions, of course, the maq’rahs and whatever scrawny livestock we could raise. We were also cursed with nayla, the most deadly and stealthy of creatures, who would scavenge ravenously through the village at night howling their blood-chilling cry. What else could survive in such an inhospitable land? How we sustained ourselves on the meager, water-starved crops we cultivated and the occasional disoriented flock of gandas or verros was a mystery. Somehow, by Prithi’s grace, we did…until the storm snatched it all from us.