This is the first installment of a story I've been thinking through this summer.
Chapter One: Fire Serpent Hall Provides Hospitality to Visiting Gods
The Hall of the Fire Serpent was unusually busy. For most of the past five years, only Tera Three-Tery and her Uncle Llew had actually lived at the Hall. A few others had come and gone with some regularity, but none of them even stayed overnight. For nearly a thousand years before Tera had come to live there, only Uncle Llew had lived there. He was known throughout the realm of Mizur as an unusually reclusive god. Gods who looked after other realms were known for having busy palaces with elaborate dinners and bright galas and never-ending entertainments, but not Llew Seven-Klevy Fire Serpent, who would venture forth every so often on matters of business and then return to the Hall, seen on a regular basis only by the very few who brought supplies or were hired to prevent mischief in the woods below. Truth to be told, the people of Mizur liked this feature of their god. A Mizuran proverb had it that a god who meddles rarely is the most helpful of the gods.
Tera herself was not particularly pleased with the sudden appearance of people. It meant that she constantly had to field timid questions from servants about whether she approved of their placement of the tapestries or the rugs or the flowers. Uncle Llew never had to answer such questions; he would walk into the room, and suddenly everyone would be busy with the chore that they had just decided was not quite finished. When he left, they would come to Tera with their questions. She had grown used to the relative quiet and seclusion of Fire Serpent Hall, which gave her plenty of time to go on walks or read a book in the library or explore the sprawling building, or converse with Uncle Llew over a meal that he usually cooked himself. She had been raised and trained as a goddess-princess in the realm of Davir, with throngs of servants around her, so the new situation was also uncomfortably like being a little girl again.
She called on her training and patiently answered all questions, trying as best she could to put the servants at ease so that they would not scurry around like mice afraid of the cat. All of these new servants had been borrowed from various noble families and wealthy merchant houses throughout Mizur. They were supposed to be all volunteers, but given that the noble families and merchant houses certainly wanted to curry favor with Uncle Llew, Tera doubted whether the volunteering was always entirely voluntary. She did not want to make life harder for them than it might already be.
It had all begun at breakfast shortly after her seventeenth birthday, when Uncle Llew had suddenly said, "I was thinking that at the end of the summer we should visit The City."
"Mizan Vir, you mean?" she replied.
"No, not any Vilim city," said Uncle Llew. 'Vilim' was the word used by the gods for a non-god. "The City."
He meant The City of the Gods; for some reason, Uncle Llew rarely used the term 'god', and when he did it was with an undertone of sarcasm or contempt, the explanation for which Tera had never been able to coax out of him. He would more often use the gods' name for their kind, Davnan, or just avoid it entirely.
"I would love that," she said. "Is there any particular reason why?"
Uncle Llew looked thoughtful for a moment, frowning in the direction of an empty corner of the breakfast room, snapping his fingers absentmindedly as he sometimes did when deep in thought, then said, "When you turn nineteen, we will have to visit anyway, for your Enrollment on the Manifest," he said, "but it would be better for that not to be your first time in The City."
He was silent a long moment, then he said, "As far as lore and skill are concerned, all the things that go with being Davnan, I have tried to catch you up, and you have done well. But there is one great gap in your education, which is how to navigate the treacheries of Davnan society. Davnan life is all about the clan; you will need to meet other members of the Embiadwei clan and get to know them. And to be wholly honest, your mother and I did not leave The City on good terms with the others, and I have been thinking of what you might have to endure because of our decisions. You will need allies."
"I would love to meet others in our clan," said Tera. It was true; her heart was thrilling and her imagination fired by the thought.
Uncle Llew looked at her drily. "You think you would love to meet our kin," he said. "They are all treacherous, I warn you. Half of Davnan politics is the fine art of stabbing people in the back while you embrace them. Constant vigilance is the only defense."
"You rarely talk about The City of the Gods," she said. "Do you miss it?"
He stared off into the empty corner again. "I suppose in an abstract way I'm curious to see the family estate again; but no, I do not miss it. The City and I parted for good a long time ago. And the people I especially do not look forward to seeing again." His eyes turned back to her and smiled. "But again, those are the results of my decisions, not yours. You should have the opportunity to see what you can get out of clan and City."
The conversation on that day had turned to the less interesting topic of her studies for the week, but a few weeks later, this time at lunch, Uncle Llew said, "We are going to have guests at the end of Sery." That put the time just five weeks away.
Tera was immensely surprised, since they had never had guests before, and said so.
"Well," said Uncle Llew, "since we are going to The City, it would be good to get a practice run, so to speak. So I've arranged for a brief visit." He wagged his finger at her. "You'll have to be on your best behavior. If you don't like them, or they don't like you, at least we tried, but the best possible result would be to make a good impression."
"Are they Embiadwei?"
"No," said Uncle Llew slowly, as if he were measuring his words. "We will meet plenty of Embiadwei when we reach The City. The Embiadwei are not a concern; they are unreliable, but they will support and protect you in their own way, because you are clan. But you will need allies from other clans, or, at least, members of other clans who have an incentive not to destroy you. Manawydan and Rhiannon are both Wenovar. The Wenovar -- let us say that the Wenovar have more than a few grudges against me." He did not seem concerned by this. "Most of them hate me with a passionate hatred, in fact, and again, I am sorry that you will have to deal with that. But we will have to start taking steps to mitigate that. And treacherous Wenovar they may be, but at least a thousand years ago, Manawydan and Rhiannon were among the most reasonable people in the clan. That they accepted the invitation is also a good sign. They will be coming with their son, whom I've never met, but is about your age."
All of Uncle Llew's insinuations about the dark agendas of the clans filled Tera with some trepidation. "Uncle Llew, do we really need to do this?"
"Yes," he said firmly. "I am currently making arrangements to get us a full staff; anything less might be taken as an insult. And we obviously cannot have the staff just show up, so we will need to have them a couple of weeks before so that everything runs smoothly on the day."
Thus Tera found herself constantly interrupted, fielding questions from shy servants who then fled away like deer from the hunter. She also was uneasy in the stomach as the day drew near, constantly wondering what these gods would be like, from this strange Wenovar clan that hated the good-natured Uncle Llew. The worst of it was that she couldn't complain about any of it to Uncle Llew, as she normally would, because now there were always servants around, at breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner, and all the times in between.
to be continued
