Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire #2)

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After the meal was over, Roan found Brin. The girl sat on her knees, a wad of rumpled cloth on her lap. Before her parents’ death, Brin had been cheerful, an eternal spring of happiness. She had been a warm fire on a cold night; cool water to parched lips; her beaming smile just as important as the lodge’s eternal flame. But neither had been seen since the giant’s attack. Roan wanted to say something, do something, but she didn’t know what. If an axle broke, Roan could fix it, but she hadn’t been able to help Gifford’s leg, and she knew she couldn’t fix Brin. There always seemed to be a better way, except when it came to people. Once broken, people couldn’t be repaired.

“Have you eaten?” Roan asked.

“Not hungry.”

Roan sat down beside her.

The camp was breaking up. People hoisted the belongings they carried in baskets and moved up the slope. The dirt that had been dug for the fire pit was now used to smother the flames. Men armed with staffs set off with dogs to gather the sheep and pigs. Parents found children and started walking down the road to give tiny feet a head start. Gifford had left before anyone since he was slower than most of the children, slower even than Padera. Only Brin, Roan, and Malcolm remained. The ex-slave sat across from the women, searching the inside of his shoe for something.

“What’s this?” Roan asked Brin, pointing at the strips of cloth.

“It’s…it’s…” Brin took a deep breath and pushed the strips away. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m too stupid.” She began to cry.

Roan watched her. Malcolm looked up as well. Unlike Gifford, Brin didn’t seem to mind them watching her cry. She didn’t seem to notice. Roan didn’t know what to do, so she did what she could and began picking up the mess. The strips of cloth had deliberate markings on them, little pictures placed one after another all along their lengths.

Brin was calming down but still crying. She waved dismissively and shook her head. “Bandages…those are the ones that were around Arion’s head. I thought…” Brin sucked on her lips as she wiped her tortured eyes. “I don’t know. I was thinking that those markings are like the pictures I used to paint on my walls.”

Roan nodded. One did look a bit like a mountain and another sort of like a person with missing arms.

“Well, I thought…I sorta thought that a picture showed a moment or an idea, but a series of pictures could tell a story. Look.” Brin raked her heels over the ground, scrubbing clear a patch of dirt. Then she drew a circle with a line under it with her finger. “Let’s say that’s Persephone. I know it doesn’t look like her, but just listen a second.” Brin drew a vertical line. “That divides the that time from this time.” She added a bigger circle and put a head on it with eyes. “That’s the big brown bear.” Lastly, Brin drew the same circle and line as before.

“Persephone again,” Roan said excitedly.

Brin looked up. “Yes! Exactly!” Then the girl drew another dividing line, and in the last space available before the grass started again, she drew another Persephone and another bear, but the bear’s eyes were little lines instead of circles, and another line came out of its center.

Roan stared at this image for a long time. While she did, Brin didn’t speak or move.

“Persephone again…” Roan muttered, trying to work it out. “The bear again…but different, and this line…” She pointed.

“Yes?” Brin asked, her voice tense.

“It almost looks…”

“Yes?” Brin inched closer.

“I mean, it’s sort of like…”

“Like what? Like what?” Brin was bouncing on folded knees.

“Almost like a spear is in its side and the bear…the eyes look closed, so the bear looks dead.”

“Yes!” Brin exploded.

Roan studied the pictures. She pointed to them in order and said, “Persephone. Then the bear. Then Persephone meets the bear, and the bear dies.”

She looked up and saw Brin smiling. “You understood it!”

“But Persephone didn’t kill the bear with a spear.”

“It doesn’t matter. It represents an idea, not a real thing. Do you understand?”

Roan didn’t, not entirely, but sort of. What she did understand was that Brin was smiling.

“It would be too hard to draw a picture of everything, but”—Brin picked up the bandages with the runes—“if I could turn the ideas into markings like this, then I would put down stories on cloth the way Suri painted these symbols. So much was lost when Maeve died. She never had the chance to tell me everything. I’ve tried to pick up the pieces from others, but I hear different accounts from various people. And this…I mean look at it.” Brin took the bandages, crushed them in her hands, pulled at them, as if she hated the strips, and threw them down. “See? You can’t hurt it. The markings are still there. If I get this right, I could put down all the stories that Maeve taught me, and whenever anyone wanted to know something, they could just look at it, even after I’m gone.”

Roan stared back at the dirt and the drawings there. The idea fascinated her. When Roan looked back at Brin, she was holding the rags once more.

“No one would ever forget them,” Brin said, and wiped her eyes. “My mom and dad, our home, our lives together, everything. If I could do that, they’d never be forgotten. And maybe in some small way, they’ll never truly die. I suppose that sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”

“No, not at all. I think it’s wonderful,” Roan said. “Better than the saws made by the little men. Better than my cart or barrels. It might just be the most amazing idea I’ve ever heard.”

Roan continued to look at the rags in wonder as Brin gathered them up and set off down the road.

“I think…” Malcolm said, punching his foot back into his shoe, then standing up. “I think we’ve just witnessed the world shift, and I doubt it’ll ever be the same again.”





CHAPTER EIGHT


Ride of the Stone God




No one can tell me Mari is not the greatest of the gods. I saw her charge forth and single-handedly fight for us, and then she sat down and generously shared food and drink with the conquered.

—THE BOOK OF BRIN