Whispering Grass - Part One
The Stone Chair

Along with the blood loss, the battering his body had taken made Haruchai feel light-headed. Barely able to focus, he had urged Jaga to gallop towards the mountains, trusting that the brave horse would take him closer to the swirling moongate and a way home. He knew from the faint musical twinkle of the pixies hidden deep in the woods that Jaga had missed his mark. But at least the endless grinding of bones was far behind.

Once again, his arrogance had nearly cost him his life. Cantering through the rich plains of this new land of Ilshenar, Haruchai had happened upon a small group of animated skeletons on a blasted heath. They stood there, swaying slightly in the fresh breeze, as if recently spat out of the soil and now confused by the remembrance of sun and air.

Haruchai had naught but contempt for the revenants. Indeed, his whole culture was revolted by these insistent undead and their refusal to rest. His people, the Monggol, believed implicitly it was the fault of the hans who buried the corpses of their loved ones in the dark, wormy earth. Of course the dead wished to return to light and life. A Monggol was laid out to the sky, so that the eagles could come and carry his bones into the sun and wind, free forever to sail over the endless plains and look after his descendants. The hans were barbarians in so many ways.

It was thus a tsereg's duty to return these wanton, woebegone creatures to rest and let their moulding bones lie uninterred upon the greensward. Haruchai had no silver upon him, but a gaggle of bemused bones would not trouble him. He hefted his spear, unwilling to waste good arrows.

The clink of his armour drew a quizzical eye-socket to him. Without a vestige of a fleshy tongue, yet did the skeleton warn its fellows. Shakily, but with grim determination, the bony soldiers marched at him. Haruchai charged into their midst and ivory splinters flew like a snow storm. His charge destroyed three and he burst though the rank, drawing Jaga round ready for charging anew. Before he touched the horse's flank though, something had caught the corner of his eye. He looked back.

A fissure opened in the mountains behind and either side was buttressed by a stone-built tower. From the black maw this created issued endless unsleeping dead. Whilst many were fellows of the bony corpses he had just crushed, their swaying ranks were full of the crumbling armoured killers the hans called bone knights. In numbers, they might bring a lone horseman down.

Jaga shied underneath him. He snapped round and saw one of the skeletons from his first attack grasp the bridle. He smashed the bony arm like a twig, but it was too late. The ravening horde was upon him.

Haruchai had finally cut a way out as if he were fleeing the dense jungles of India. Safe now in the pixie wood, he reflected ruefully on how close he had come to losing Jaga. He dismounted and whispered secret words to his horse, letting the dear animal nuzzle his hand gently before producing an apple as sweet as his pride. Satisfied that Jaga was barely scratched, he looked to bind his own wounds.

The harmonious sussuration of the forest leaves made a tranquil canvas for the pixies' exquisite chiming. They never responded to his greetings, skittering away in a chittering veil of tinkling bells but he felt comforted by their strange utterings even so. In all of this alien, diverse and dangerous land, the woodland dwellings of the pixies were home indeed.

Jaga's ears pricked a heartbeat before Haruchai also heard it. A change in the forest song - nay, the sound intruded into the forest from without. Barely perceptible, it sounded like the great blue expanses of water Haruchai hated - the sea. Alarmed, he looked madly for the rising waters.

Of course, there were none. The forest's edge gave way to familiar grass and thence to mountain.Yet the sound was still there and as he listened he realised it was speaking. Moreover, it was speaking a language it could not know here. It spoke the words of the Altai foothills, sang the songs of the steppes. The sound was the sound of home.

Haruchai was transfixed. He had dreamt of home and now even the grass whispered to him of his lost life. He wondered briefly if this world had finally driven him mad - or perhaps he was actually still at home and this entire place was a madman's fantasy. Maybe his senses were finally returning?

At the edge of the wood, the grass started rippling, as if a wind had sprung up. The long blades bent over as the scirocco passed, but it suddenly dawned on him that this was no natural wind. The blowing grass made a series of shapes in the flowing script of the Monggol. The wind was commanding him to follow.

Unthinking, Haruchai leapt upon his horse and cantered after the snaking words. They made no sense, yet the patterns in the greensward were unmistakably Monggol. He knew he had seen nothing even close in this land of the Hans. The sinuous trail led him closer to the mountains and then, like an eel into its burrow, disappeared into an ivy shrouded cave.

Haruchai sighed. He hated caves and tunnels and the man-made caverns called dungeons. They were always bad news. Yet, he had to know the meaning of his vision. He swigged a bottle of the bitter black liquid the shamans brewed to open the eyes in darkness, and trotted Jaga through the veil of creepers.

He felt a sharp pain in his knuckles only to realise he had been gripping his spear so tightly his blood had reversed its flow. Grinning, he loosened his fingers. He was in a natural cavern, and he was alone. Carefully, he investigated every corner of the cave, finding naught but mould and fungi. Towards the back of the space, these mushrooms took on a reddish hue and in the gloaming he seemed to discern a pattern - as if they were laid out in a carpet. Moving closer, and remembering red mushrooms that exploded without warning, he saw that beyond them was a granite chair. Only the chair showed that anything but nature had worked herein.

These mushrooms proved silent and inoffensive, so he dismounted and stepped over them to approach the chair. It looked very old, yet though the engraving upon it was softened by the eons, still was it legible. And then he stepped back, shocked. The carvings were meaningless to him, evidently in some ancient Han language - but the letters were unmistakably Han. Except for one simple line of symbols high up on the back of the chair. Any Han would have taken the line to be a curlicue decoration. Haruchai knew the words like old friends. A millennium before his birth, in this land beyond a land beyond a dream, someone had written a message in Monggol script.

"Nine tents make your father's home" it read. Haruchai pondered for a moment but dismissed his ignorance. This was not for him to think upon, but for learned bugus. Carefully, he searched the chair for any more writing he would recognise. There was none.

The silence was becoming uncomfortable and the tell-tale signs of the light-giving potion's growing weakness were upon him. His mind whirling, he remounted and cantered out of the cave. Dusk was falling outside. His confusion began to turn to certainty as he turned Jaga to the western mountains and galloped for the moongate. He had to find a wise man and understand this mystery. If something needed to be killed, Haruchai would be first to accept the challenge. But this needed books, and books scared him.

Yet as the growing darkness allowed the faint illumination of the nearby shrine to guide him, he was content. He knew someone who understood books.

© 2001 Pól-MichelSeachra AnDaingean