An-t-Sultain in the year, of 719 of the Saviour was a magnificent time, crisp and not at all as cool as the previous year when all shuffled along, shivering up and down the unpaved road of the sea-side landscape. A week after the discussion with Helga, the rain that had haunted that night abated to the gratitude of all those who lived nearby. During which time, many of the local fishermen, who were responsible for feeding the vast majority of the locals took ever more to the sea. Keen as they were to gather enough fish, in preparation of the autumn festival of Fufluns, the god of the harvest.

  Days passed with every house bustling with activity and every boat perpetually out at sea. None were more preoccupied than Kenna the seamstress, due to the popularity of this particular festival with the local lasses. Each one of them, along with also those who were older with little time for weaving or knitting, and in possession of spare coin or food were keen to turn to her for assistance. Her only aid in this trying time was her assistant Indulf and her goddaughter Daegan. Daegan was the daughter of her deceased friend Olith, and the local blacksmith Corin. From dawn to dusk, the former where he could ordinarily be found not only aiding his mother Ida, or his fiancée Inga, he was instead found bent over his loom in his teacher’s shop. Shy, more so than the rest of those who lived nearby, which included his younger brother the rather loud Trygve or his excitable love, Inga. So that a great many of those who lived in the local area, preferred to leave him be, attempted to prompt him into chattering with them, if unsuccessfully (this being whensoever they saw him).

  Kenna was of a completely different nature. Loud by nature, she was an argumentative woman of middling height and years, one whom had a tendency to either be greatly loved or despised. Notably by the family, that lived nearest to her for they had long hungered for the land she had inherited from her teacher, Eachann who had taught her the art and business of weaving. He had also taught her to dye cloth, with his knowledge of such things rare even in those days. Long since deceased by a fair amount of years he had been respected, and even admired by most. Her complaints regarding this year were far worst and more strident than any others, in the vicinity of Glasvhail, so that even those who hated her such as Frang and his wife Lucrais felt irritated by her son’s absence.

  “He ought to be herewith Indulf and I! How dare he scamper off, to who knows where to do who knows what!” Screeched brown-haired Kenna, who had in a matter of days developed the habit (more than usual) of chewing the ears of any and all who visited her at some length, on the topic of her son; whom she felt had let her down more than at any other time. Still considered pretty by some if she were to only cease scowling and yelling so often at present none dared correct her. Ida, her closest friend, Indulf and Daegan were amongst the only ones who ever did.

  Where was Cormac during such a time of chaos, you may ask? He was off visiting, with his missing father’s finest friend, Corin. Born abroad, the blacksmith had appeared nigh on twenty years prior after a storm had tore apart the coasts of the kingdom of Caledonia, whereupon he was found at sea by Murchadh. Wounded he was not expected to survive at the time, he was nursed back to proper health by the lady Olith, whom he married only to succeed her father as the blacksmith of Glasvhail. A skilled artisan, one whom was the only man in the locality outside of Freygil to speak highly of the lad’s father, it was for this reason he was prone to visiting his home.

  “They are both queer if you ask me,” Grumbled the Salmon, the dour-natured grandfather of Inga who was grey-bearded and with few hairs still left upon the top of his round head. Like with Kenna, his face was at almost all times twisted into the form of a scowl. Salmon’s actual name was Muirdach the Fisher for his immense success as a fisherman, a trade and art-form he held above all others. His was a pessimistic nature, so that he had never truly taken to either Corin or Cormac. “Hardly any good has ever come out of anything they have ever done.”

  “But what of Daegan? Without uncle Murchadh rescuing Corin, she would not be alive to-day,” Inga objected at once, the young seventeen year old woman was pretty, blonde and a great admirer of the smith’s fifteen year old daughter. This in spite of her being the other lass’ senior by twenty-five months, not that this bothered the romantic girl who was promised to Indulf.

  “Bah, as though she or her father, have truly done much good, for our village,” Complained Salmon harshly with a slight grunt of indifference. “In any case the lass could stand to also be humbled as she is by far the most arrogant wench I have ever beheld.”

  His words drew many an eye-rolls and long-suffering remarks from all those about him, for they all thought him far in a way the most arrogant person of any sort in the locality.

  What was more, to call this a village, was something of an exaggeration, what with how it was simply a series of farms, smithies and shops, aligned along the near-eternally unpaved road.

  The Erlbaryn Mountains loomed in the distance, to the south, the Narthern River before them to the north. Rothien was very plentiful as far as farming communities went. With many travelers visiting it throughout the year, most especially, when there was a festival near ‘Castle-Fidach’, where the Mormaer of Fidach resided. A man descended from the Duibh blood-line, one that traced its lineage back to the illegitimately born High-King of the Caleds, Duibh himself. With the man’s son Giric having forsworn his place in the line of succession to the thistle-crown, the MacDuibh family had become trusted advisors of the royal line whom they were cousins to. Their lands bordered those of Strawthern in the south, and were originally a well-positioned check upon the power and growing influence of that southron line. In more recent times, the MacDuibh line had come to favour with the split in the royal line into two, the elder which was that of Donnchad the Mad. Whereas the Strawtherns under the headship of the young Mormaer Raghnall the Red or the ‘Lion’ as some had come to know him by this time, was a close personal friend and pupil of Mael Bethad the King.

  The few that stopped, on by had to push through the Dyrkwoods to reach it. Or they arrived by boat, from the northern tip of the inner sea, known as the Firth of the Thern, to the north-east of the village. The port was not a sizeable one, as all towns and cities and hamlets in Caledonia were always considerably smaller in size to those in Brittia or even on the Continent. Save for mayhaps Sgain, the largest of the cities of the Caleds, for which they often called it the ‘jewel of the promontory’ for the promontory facing the sea that, it stood upon.

  *****

  Merchants poured in from all throughout the south, in small numbers for the hamlet of Glasvhail were after-all hardly of any great importance. Being out of the way, with only a slim route around the Dyrkwoods which covered much of the south of this part of Rothien, Glasvhail was however popular amongst the wine-traders of Strawthern (where most of the finest grapes of Caledonia grew along with the best barley-wheat). Some of the cloth merchants arrived from as far as Noren?ia, the northernmost lands of Gallia that great continental state that loomed over all the west of North-Agenor, with the Noren?ians renowned for their fine wool.

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  Many of those who arrived did so slowly, over the course of weeks from the end of the eighth month of Dàmhar and well into the ninth one. Most of those who arrived from abroad were amongst those who had been in attendance during the previous year’s festival. Several others had been present during the spring-festival of Turan, which was to follow the Fufluns autumn festival when the winter was at an end.

  The most noteworthy of the newcomers was none other than Wiglaf the sorcerer. A Cymran of some renown, he cut a fine figure with his waist-length beard, great pointed grey hat and blue robes that shone in the sunlight of the twin suns that were high in the heavens when he arrived. Grey-eyed, with a twinkle in his gaze, he reached Glasvhail riding his well-saddled horse, which trotted slowly under the weight of a great baggage drawn behind the small horse. By no means a war-horse, the steed appeared where its rider was cheerful, utterly disheartened to the brink of grouchy unhappiness.

  His arrival was a terrible shock to a great many of the locals, with the quiet old man seeking out the small home of Corin of Forlarin. A one-story building made of local ash-wood with a small amount of stone near the foundations, taken from a local quarry thirty leagues west of the village. The red-roof made from local red-bark had been carefully put together, and shone brilliantly in the light of the twin suns’. With the roofed stone-building next to the house where most of Corin’s great labour was undertaken, with it having its own chimney, large collection of wood and was where he could most commonly be found. The house exterior was also reddened in the descending light of the suns, with none more startled by the arrival of the Cymran than the Gallian himself.

  Long-since familiar with the sorcerer, who had been present at Murchadh’s funeral years prior, where he had delivered a magnificent eulogy and death-song in the custom of the old way of the Cymru and the Caleds’. Corin had been amongst the chief-mourners for the funeral. Ordinarily it would have included the cremation of the body of the man in question, but as he drowned at sea and there were but a few wood-planks of his boat discovered; they had instead filled his ash-container with little private possessions. Such as earrings, a favourite scarf, several clay-rings and a wooden lion he had once carved for his son. This last possession was placed inside the coffin, by the lad, who had said that he wished the lion to offer some comfort and memory of him wherever he was headed.

  Where the elders and those of middle-age had never much cared for the old sorcerer, using the term ‘wizard’ and ‘heretic’ in scorn of him. If ever you run into a magii there are few things that are as likely to outrage them so much, as the term ‘wizard’. A term which they have never much cared for, and which is a counterpart to that of ‘witch’ a people infamous for their many dealings with demons.

  “Let us hope he keeps away, from Cormac,” Muttered Kenna to Indulf, in a foul mood from the moment she learnt of the sorcerer’s arrival into the area. Though he had been unfailing in his kindness to her, Wiglaf had won hardly any gratitude from her. Her antipathy had its roots in his sudden departure shortly after Murchadh’s funeral nigh on ten years previous to the current date.

  She hardly noticed the expression of frustration that painted itself unto the youthful face, of the eighteen summers-old son of her great friend Ida. He bit his lower lip to keep from speaking, too timid to speak out against her, even if in defence of his friend Cormac. It being no great secret that he loved her son as one might a younger brother, in many ways he preferred him to the company of a great many of his five brothers and three sisters.

  Where Indulf was soft-hearted by nature towards his young friend, was like her mistrustful of the sorcerer, his fiancé he discovered had considerable interest in the old man. Keen to meet him (as she had not yet done so) and even keener, to see magic-tricks which she was disappointed after she was introduced to him by Trygve that he preferred to demure from. Saying as he did so, “Nay, magic- true magic is not for simple show, if you wish I could sing a good tune?”

  Inga accepted this latter offer, she did not stay over-long as she was soon called away by the Salmon, who had just run back to shore in the hopes of food. Having forgotten to carry some of the bread and cheese she had offered earlier along with him in his boat, it was at present up to his granddaughter to fetch some for him. With her future good-brother in turn staying to mock and banter with the old magii.

  Latterly he was to report to his brother, with considerable confusion when the day and the many labours that it had carried with it were at an end. “It is an odd thing.”

  “What is?” Indulf asked him, as they walked home, his brother having not worked out at sea as a fisherman’s apprentice for the day, to aid their mother and Inga in various other tasks.

  “The black bolt of cloth that had been dragged along by his horse was upon the table in the smithy.” Noted the younger of the two men, stroking his chin thoughtfully as though it had a beard already, this was a habit he had learnt since his earliest years from their father, who had a thick beard. “The metal beneath it was onyx, in coloration when I pressed him to know from whence it came, Wiglaf grew angry with me. ‘Never you mind the black rock and pray you never need know from whence it came or whithersoever it is headed,’ he said to me, quite why is beyond me.”

  Indulf agreed that it was strange, especially given how typically free with knowledge the Cymran was on most occasions when he happened to visit Glasvhail. They both thought this strange, and had in their curiosity towards the black-stone in common. They knew only that it had been brought north with the foreigner, neither evinced much desire to further test the fury of the sorcerer. It was akin in their eyes, to angering one’s grandfather as they were both familiar with him and disliked the notion of disappointing him a great deal more, than they expressed that evening.

  It was not Inga, or the two men who took the greatest interest in the return of Wiglaf to the locality of Glasvhail, but Conn the druid. The moment he heard of the man’s return, he might well have been expected to squawk, and to leap to his feet to march out to Corin’s home to demand the man’s immediate departure. To the great displeasure of all who hated the sorcerer (and the vast amusement of a great many others), he in place of this possible action preferred to hide in his home beneath his bed-covers, whilst praying for the man’s departure.

  Unaware of this initially, the sorcerer was to in the days just before the festival have to the relief of a great many, little to do with his host’s neighbours. Corin and him, were to all but barricade themselves inside the man’s home for the better part of the day. Quite why, was a mystery to most, with the two when they emerged going straight to the smithy whereupon Corin had his daughter who was about ready to depart, to aid Kenna fetch him Cormac. This likely was one of the principal reasons, for her fury towards the sorcerer, for she had long hated the smith for his bond with her son, not that either man paid her much mind in that regard.

  Daegan, did as bidden, racing from her father’s home, keen as ever to see Cormac though she did not inform anyone quite why. A boastful lass by nature, one whom had been dubbed a number of years prior when she had become infamous throughout the locality for her braggart ways, as the ‘She-Paladin’. This title had been given to her by that eternal jester Trygve, who full of mockery for her had bestowed it upon her, without her realizing it, was done in the spirit of mischief. She fancied herself a ‘She-Paladin’, and the finest woman in the whole of the lairddom of Thernkirk, possibly even Fidach and Rothien, so great was her self-belief (or conceit).

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