Sunbringer

The delegation from the North had brought wedding gifts with them, to acknowledge the honour it was for the king to have chosen himself a wife from among their people.

For the queen mother, goblets of moulded glass, their stems glittering red like rubies. “For your hospitality in welcoming our sister into your family,” they said. “You show us a great honour.”

The queen mother accepted the gift with a gracious nod, but her smile was thin and her gaze as sharp as broken ice.

For the new queen, a cloak of deep red velvet, the hem embroidered with swallows’ wings in golden thread. “Like the swallow, may you make the South your home,” they told her, “though its summer be regrettably brief.”

The new queen pulled the cloak gratefully around her shoulders and laughed.

Atar, Onatar – Step by Step

One of my joys is language, whether using existing ones or constructing new ones for my fantasy worlds. This post is an example of the latter. I’ve taken a song I love and translated it into Gäldoren, the language I’ve been working on recently.

[It takes with teeth]

a riddle

It takes with teeth but does not eat
And covets neither bread nor meat
But mounted like a trophy’s horns,
What once it bit, it now adorns.

Recruits

The chill of a swiftly-approaching winter had filled the tavern to near bursting. Gusts of icy wind snapped at the patrons’ heels as they ducked beneath the lintel and hurried to the hearth, shaking aside heavy folds of damp cloak and warming stiff fingers by the flames. Others had found a seat at one of the many tables and warmed their insides with a feyworth of the innkeeper’s stew.

Beef it was today, with a hearty mix of bloodroot, carrots and potatoes. Æthred ladled it out generously at the counter while her mother was upstairs showing a traveller to his night’s lodgings.

“Borian!” Æthred called back toward the kitchens. “Have we got any more bowls ready yet?”

Her answer came in the form of a lanky, mop-headed young man who pushed the door open with an elbow and plopped an armful of clean bowls down on the counter. “As promised, my lady,” he said with a mock bow. “Spotless, every last one of them.”

Æthred swatted his bowed head with her dishcloth, but she couldn’t help the smile that crept onto her face. “Stop it. If I’m a lady, you’re a piece of cheese.”

The Sagremore Tree

a ballad

The night draws near and your shadow waxes long,
So come in close and I’ll spin for you a song
Of an autumn’s end and a winter’s icy night
And a child who loved her father more than light:
He was more to her than the morning and its light.

Cerulean Blue

“Finest blue dyes, straight from Ajharakt! You won’t see a brighter blue this side of the Liftling Strait!”

Cali gasped and came to a halt before the cloth merchant, letting go of her mother’s skirt in her amazement. Never, she thought, had she seen such deep, vibrant colour imprinted on a humble piece of cloth.

“Did you cut a piece from the sky, faer?” she asked in a whisper, her eyes glued to his wares. The blue dazzled her; it was impossible to look away.

His booming laugh shook the stall and sent the lengths of fabric all a-quiver. “It’s the very finest bit of the sky, little lady. Across the sea in Ajharakt the sky is so close you can cut it”—he mimed the action—“with a pair of tailor’s shears.”