《The First Mage》


 Verse 1

    The workings of gods had left the small tribe of the Altai roaming the steppes, in the beginning of the world.


    Twenty people that became a hundred over the years, and then fifty when the gelid winter came.


    Thatched huts, warm blood, the sun rising between the mountains. Hunting the small rabbit, dancing while intoxicated in soma.


    They seldom talked; language was still a luxurious commodity, and silence was so much more plentiful. They liked to hear the plains when washed by the rains, and the trees falling and toppling over with the tempests.


    They liked to be together gathered in long embraces. They were the only creatures they knew as them: the long legs, the sad eyes, the placid gaze. And so each one felt the others like they felt themselves, and every night in the cold they suffered the other''s fears, and cried.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    The world was new, and they roamed the vast steppes, traversed solitary mountains, wet their feet at neverfound rivers.


    And when they invented the Name, it was a night like every other, except it was in the high of the winter, or the spring. And it was atop a nameless mountain, or at the beaches of a cold river.


    The Name was uttered by the winds to the Altai whistling in the mountain, or by the water and the rocks by the river.


    I don''t remember very well, as I was asleep and now I''m old. Old and older than these rivers from now, where your countrymen wash their feet and call themselves the Merban. Older than your cities and your Emperors of lore. Older than your language and your pilgrims, and your mages or you tales.


    And the Altai, they are older than your magic, as they were born at the beggining of the world, and traversed the nameless steppes, to discover the Name, where all things come to be.

 Chapter One: Li, the old rain.

    Even now I hear the thunder.


    We, the Altai, traversed the sierra after leaving the great plains of Eritrea. The storm had surprised us in the open between the mountains, so we had to take cover in a nearby cave. We slept covering our bodies with dry goat skins and blankets woven with leaves inside our improvised tents, shivering.


    Enui died on the first day of winter, weeks ago. Her long, ashen hair was kept by her father and he made a collar from it for himself. Her body remains there, in a cave at the foot of the mountain, to sleep for all eternity sheltered by the giant rocks.


    He remained seated outside the tent, looking at the mouth of the cave where all of us, the tribe, rested, he himself gazing at the dark clouds in the sky, and the thunders that called the pouring.


    We had abandoned the great plains. The wind was too tempestuous and the game was too scarce. I remember how I loved the sun that seemed to want to remain forever in a sunset, just before the cold nights arrived and we had to get back to our tents to sleep.


    Mother and father took the vigil and patrolled the camp, whispering like the rustle of the wind, as not to alert the old bisons, the wild horses and the old foxes. And also not too wake us up, the children.


    I remember seeing the old ghosts in the shadows of my ger when I was alone with my brother. Their dark forms flickering with the beating of our hearts, laughing at me, hushing some secrets I tried to hear and understand, but never did, because everytime I thought they were about to tell me something, the loud snores of my brother announced the arrival of the morning. He opened his eyes, as if he always had been awake. And I remember his sweet voice, now lost to the echoes of time:


    "Hello, Li. Brother."


    But those weeks he didn''t wake up, nor did I look for the secrets in the shadows. The stormclouds had descended and found their way into the cavern. Mother had left to the mountain, and father stood there, at the entrance of the cave, with anxiety darkening his face. The scars on his skin soured with the flicker of the thunder.


    "I saw the second moon rising," he told us when we looked for him. "I''m going to look for your mother."


    He left carrying with him his old, crumbling axe, he himself covered only with the skin of an old bison, coughing. We heard his asthmatic breathing, but didn''t say anything. My brother took me besides our tent and started the fire.


    "Li. Remember the fox?" and grinned. He was my younger brother. "So, do you like it better here, or in the plains?"


    I didn''t answer his question. Only looked at the entrance of the cave and said;


    "Father is tired. His lungs are dying. Where is mother?"


    "Father will be fine. He will always be fine. So will mother, Li. Those oldbones refuse to die." And he stirred the fire. "So, do you remember the fox, Li, or not?"


    Seeing I didn''t answer him, he stood up and left to our tent to get some dried meat to eat. While I observed the storm outside, the fire grew dim, and finally died in a few seconds.


    When my brother came back with a patch of meat, he looked at me and the dead fire, and sighed.


    "Li. The fire died. Can you... eh. Start it again?"


    As I looked at him with curiosity, I reached for the dry sticks and gathered some broken leaves in my palm. I was about to start spinning, when my brother talked again.


    "No, the other way..."


    My brother. The only one I had through the eras! Son of my mother and my father. I still see his big, twinkling grey eyes looking at me, expectantly. So I uttered the Name, the only one I knew then:


    "Fire"


    And in my palm, a little, languid flame was slowly born, timidly creaking. It was almost invisible and in the point of extiguishing, but my brother looked at it with his big eyes, and laughed. Enui''s father, there at the entrance of the cave, also looked, and remained silent.


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    And so I started the fire again, invoking the Name, while my brother talked about our adventures in the plains, and the old cunning fox we used to tail, while eating the dried meat and covering ourselves, seated there, with the woven leaves. Father had left to look for mother in the storm.


    So started our life in the mountains.


    * * *


    My brother slept in my lap as I watched the fire. "Where is father?" I asked myself. The storm howled as the tribe slept; even Enui''s father had entered his to sleep besides his wife.


    "Why is this night so long?"


    Sometimes, when everything was silent, and the tribe slept, I heard the whispers of the World. Blurry images and names drifted around me. That night, I remembered my mother.


    I had been born on the travel from the vast caves of the Ankara to the great plains of Eritrea. A languid, little baby everyone thought would die.


    Those years half of the tribe had died in the winter of the Tundra where my ancestors, my grandfathers, had lived before parting to Ankara.


    My mother had been nothing more than a feeble sack of bones with a swollen belly one could mistake with the harshness of hunger, and where my father, as young as he was, had acquired the phtisis that would consume his lungs the rest of his life. She was fifteen that year, and he was sixteen.


    I was born in a tent in the outskirts of the great plains, were grew the rock forests, beneath a giant rock that sheltered us from the wild winds. My mother could hold me with her two hands cupped. I was breathing with difficulty, and didn''t have the strenght to cry or to even wail. I struggled just to stay alive.


    The elders told them to let me die at the top of a nearby hill, as to become a friendly spirit of nature that would bless them in their travel, because I was destined to die soon.


    And they left me here, in a little straw cot bedded with leaves. It started to rain, so they went back to the tents beneath the rocks. Only my mother remained there with me. And when we were alone atop the hill, with the rain, then I started to cry. So she called me Li, that means Rain.


    My brother was born three years later, when we already lived in the plains. The tribe had found a relative prosperity; while the game was too scarce and the winds blew too wildly, the sunsets were warm and the nights were filled with the cold, twinkling stars, and almost never rained.


    The relative lack of food also meant that the worst predators we had to care about were the astray puma, or the slithering snakes. The foxes, sly as they were, only looked at us from afar, and their thieving eyes closed dissapointedly at the realization that we, the Altai, were even more miserable than them. Our skinny frames, the sad gazes. The men that drowned in soma, the woman with withered bosoms and varicose legs.


    I imagine our fleshes were distasteful for even the hungry vultures that roamed the skies. From roaming so much, our flesh was coarse and sour, lacking the tiniest trace of tenderness. My brother always used to say, those years, with the dried meat in his hands: "Look. This is probably moister than we are" and showed us his thigh, and laughed.


    But while our fleshes were weary of the roads, our hearts were warm, and we knew each other as we knew ourselves.


    Even more so him, always laughing and calling the winds, climbing the great rocks in the rock forest where we used to set up the tents. "Wind! Wind!" or the grass. If there was one person that, through all the eras, knew the Name, it was him. It was as if all the simplicity of the world was his.


    Alas, the Name never heard him. And he always asked me to teach him how to lit up the fire with a word, or to slowly move the winds when the clouds mounted.


    His name was Ji, that means Grass that''s slowly sprouting through the rough terrain. He was my only brother. The only one that knew the Name as I did.

 Chapter Two: Establishing the tribe.

    Two little kids were traversing the lonely mountains. They were looking for their parents.


    "Li, are we the only ones in this world?"


    Li shook his head. He did not know. Sometimes, in the epiphany of the shadows, it occured him that there were countless people and worlds as new as this one.


    But never in the history of the tribe had they encountered another tribe. Sometimes, maybe pressed by the enormous solitude, the tribesmen gathered some leaves, little stone chisels and made some ink and drew pictures of their travels around the lands and the generations in the caves or at the stony cliffs.


    For them, they were places they would never come back; the basin of a river, an ivory mountain, the cold Tundra. But they did anyway.


    Ji, the little one, was carving with a little chisel and some ink the path they took, as not to get lost in the mountains.


    "Father is always too reliant in his instincts. And mother in the Names," Li complained.


    Ji''s ears stood up. The Names. How did they manage to travel the inhospitable world, making themselves a place beneath the mountains or the plains? It was because of the Names. The women of the tribe could, sometimes, with a whisper, or a loud shout, pacify the tumultuous rivers. Li, his brother, was the only male in the tribe that could hold and whisper the Name, but only barely.


    "How many names does Mother hold, Li?


    "Two, Ji," Li answered. His brother loved hearing it. "Imai, the Southern Winds, and the Ji-balai, the Soothing Grass."This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Ji''s gaze lighted up, and grinned.


    "And you, Li?"


    Li kept silent, pondering. He did not hold any Names, at least not like the women of the Altai did. He remembered the quiet whispers of the World, but seeing the expectant gaze of his little brother, he only managed to utter.


    "Fire.


    "Which one?"


    Li looked at his brother and sighed.


    "Only that, Fire. Look, there is a ravine. I see some footprints. They are light. Must be Father''s. Come on, let''s descend."


    Soon enough they found their parents at the exit of the ravine, were a great plateau revealed itself. It was halfway covered by the mountains, and the outer half gave sight of the abyss and the horizon, where one could see, many kilometers away from the moutain range, a vast forest.


    His father and his mother were erecting some huts. His father had used his old axe to cut down some trees and set up the skeleton of the circular huts, while her mother, with her rough hands covered them with fresh mud from a nearby creak, and expertly sealed them with hard plant fibers.


    Ji left running to his mother, arms wailing.


    "Mother, mother!


    "Why have you come here?


    "We were worried. Father said he saw the second moon."


    The woman looked at her husband, and softly sighed.


    "Li," called. "Can you start a fire?"


    Soon, the tribe arrived. Father used the fire to call the rest, and mother used it to seal and dry the huts. Then the rest started raising their own. When the night came, all gathered around the great fire, and started to sing. The woman called the names they held, and the men beat long skins at rythm. The air around the tribe slowly started to tremble, and the night cleared. The winds, placid as they were, hovered around them, and the distant bushes whispered. The mysteries of the world were slowly dissolved, and the infinite solitude left.


    "Are we the only ones in this world?" Asked to himself Li, and looked at his brother, happily drinking and hugging his mother. And his taciturn father besides them, looking distractedly at the sole moon in the night''s sky.


    "The second moon''s rising." whispered Li. He felt something was going to happen. When he looked at the darkness, there at the other side from where the great fire danced, he thought he saw the old ghosts in the shadow laughing.


    * * *

 Chapter Three: Dream, Ji, as I do.

    Those years I had dreams for the tribe. In my reveries I saw houses of warm, white stone, erected at the top of an ivory mountain, where a little plateau would hold us all and we would not die from the cold, as my ancestors had died, nor from hunger, as died my older stillborn sister, a few years before I was born.


    We would use the Fire and the Thunder to drive away the Black Miasma that killed Enui and filled her heart and his lungs with decayed pustules. Mother would sleep placidly over a mull and warm skin, her flesh full and rosy, and my father would attentively gaze at the rivers guarded by a neverextinguishing fire.


    But when I woke up, I always found myself shivering from the coldness of an astray gust of wind that had entered by the little holes that always appeared in our muddy huts, no matter how throroughly Mother covered them again and again. And I found always myself looking for the warmness of my parents, and of Ji, softly snoring, calmed by the Ji-balai of Mother. But most nights it was not enough, and I left our hut with my woven blanket and went to the remnants of the great fire.


    There I tried to invoke the Names that the World whispered to me, to decipher the secrets the old ghosts mockingly revealed me, knowing that I could not understand.


    "Fire!" I softly shouted, wailing my arms grandiously, just to be greeted by the playful winds, or to hear the quiet laughter of the foxes in their dens.


    "Wind! I am Li! The old rain!"


    And when I grew tired, I could only look at my palm and whisper sadly to my old friend. "Fire," and see the little flame that didn''t hurt me, but wasn''t big enough even to light my surroundings, and was limited to start little fires. How far away was I from my dreams!


    Inside me, a profound desperation grew, and I wanted to cry.


    But that night, the first night we slept at the plateu in that nameless mountain, there was someone looking at me; Ji, my little brother. He had awoken some time before I did, and saw when I left, so he followed me and saw me from the shadows of the huts. When I was looking at the little flame in my hands, he approached me and said kindly to me:You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    "Brother. What did you dream?" And I tried to hide from him my misty eyes extinguishing the little fire. But the starry sky and the solitary moon illuminated his big grey eyes that looked at me with that profound pride and admiration. And for a moment, I thought I understood a little of the secrets the old ghosts told me, and I trembled. For a second I felt the throes of the future, and the inmenseness of time. For a second I saw Ji as I was old and older than the eras, his gaze an instant feeble and weak in the eternity. And I felt that I would lose him, and forget his name in the rivers, not to be uttered again by anyone.


    So I told him. Told him of my dreams. Of the ivory mountain and our tribe, that would be a bustling city. Not a city, but an empire! A vast tribe where the huts where made of stone and there were so many people there existed people one did not know! Of the absense of illness and hunger. And I told him of the Names the world ushered to my heart, and of the silence. Some tears were streaming down my face, but Ji said;


    "Do you want to summon the winds, brother? Well then observe me!"


    And he left bobbing to a little mound, and extended his arms and dictated:


    "Winds! I am Ji! The grass that moves the world! And I command you to come and blow away those rivers!"


    Obviously, the wind didn''t came, but Ji kept on going, and approached the dead great fire.


    "Fire! Wake up and illuminate this night to a day! And cook me some rabbit!"


    Then he approached the stones and said:


    "Stones! Make me a seat, as I am tired and my buttocks hurt from the leaves!" Then, appearing to have heard something, he dissaprovingly looked to the side and said:


    "And you, trees! Stop laughing and grow me some fruits! Mother likes redberries!"


    And he approached me, and waving and bobbing his arms at me, he commanded,


    "Li! My brother! I am Ji, and I order you not to cry!"


    And I started laughing while I still cried. We were so young and the world was too vast. The solitude was too big. And he approached me even more and took me by the hand and said.


    "Li, show me the great Fire."


    So I embarassedly whispered the Name, and the little flame lit up and licked my brothers fingers.


    "It doesn''t hurt. It''s warm, and it feels like you do." and smiled at me. "The dreams you have, they are good dreams, brother.


    "One day, I know, we will leave the sierra, and find our mountain. And you are going to hold all the Names upon this world. So we won''t have to suffer again, Li." And he looked attentively at me while I felt for the first time so clearly the rivers of time, and the secrets of the world. But they didn''t matter. I stepped closer and hugged him.


    One day I would hold the Name, and discover the Might that accompanied it. But Ji was never going to be there to see it.

 Chapter Four: The Fire that honours the Breeze

    The days passed quietly.


    Li raised his hands against the immensity, Ji, behind him, looked interested:


    "Today, we will start raising the tribe!


    "Come on, come on, Ji, start gathering the branches."


    The brothers had found some nice places around the plateu where they would start raising the Tribe of their dreams. As they laughed, they gathered leaves, branches, and prepared the creeks from they would collect mud. The sun, young as the day, observed them placidly.


    Soon, a dozen of little, badly erected huts rose against the winds. Some of them were on secret faces of the peaks, some beneath the great rocks that witnessed the abyss, some on distant mounds, and in all of them the soft winds blew, as if blessing them. And as the day advanced it seem as if the shadows themselves elongated themselves to cover them, to guard them in their embrace, to soothe the burning hotness of the midday.


    At the end of the day, the chose one on the side of a peak, and lit a fire outside.


    The wind blew and sweetly caressed their young cheeks, moving their long, dirty hairs.


    "First, we will make a city for the Gods."


    Li, with a stick, drew in the fresh soil a shaky diagram.


    "This one, for the Mountain, this one for the Tundra, and this one for the Rivers. Then, one for Mother and for Father..."


    Then, with a look, said:


    "Go on now, Ji, I''ll remain here thinking for a while."


    Once alone, in the little hut, he gazed the distant landscape, and with a hand drew strange symbols in the air.


    "Where is our home?"


    But then thought, while scribbling more plans in the sand: "There is no time for that. The Tribe awaits us. The Gods are impatient. Mother is cold and Father has the miasma eating his lungs. There is no time to lose." Some sense of urgency tinged his little, young heart, and he sighed.


    The sunset slowly came, and with it the darkening of the mountains. Li heard a sound reverberating and echoing in the air. Picked with curiosity, he reached the entrance of the hut and then slowly climbed up the peak, behind a rock, where he started listening and saw a warm scene;


    A slow breeze roamed the infinite steppes, playing with the wild straw, licking the great rocks. A woman sang.


    "Long are the days and you, my love, so far away,


    In the God''s steppes, where the winds play until they die..."


    A faint, sweet touch of sadness permeated her words. They stretched and got lost in the lands. Suddenly, from somewhere, a little bird with a blue tail that became black as the sunset fell sat on her shoulder. It was the spirit of her long lost daughter. It hopped around as candidly as the baby that never came to be was supposed to do. Chirped and pecked lovingly her ear. Some distance away, from atop a rock, a little boy descended and tiredly rested in her lap. It was Ji, that had been playing under the watchful eyes of his mother.


    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Will we ever have a home, Mother?" Ji asked her thoughtfully. He had know the travel of the sierra, and the life in the plains. The parting had, more than anyone, hurt him deeply.


    "These now are our mountains. Our home. As the plains were, little one."


    "Will we all die like Enui did?"


    The gaze of the woman got lost in remembrance.


    "I don''t know..."


    Behind the rock, where Li attentively listened, the Words spoken made the world vibrate. His heart vibrated too, it shook with some strange remembrance, as if his soul remembered some distant, everpresent origin. Then he heard her voice:


    "Li, son, come here, you don''t have to hide."


    Flushed with embarassment, he went and sat with his brother and his mother. Ji, in her embrace, just looked at his brother, he himself enjoying the peace and softness of her lap and her hands.


    "Li, Ji, hear me." said their Mother, suddenly and seriously.


    "Huh? Mother?"


    "Sometime soon, the Young Ones will come. And we will finally meet."


    The boys didn''t understand.


    "Who?"


    "Our brothers and our sisters. People like us. But they are younger, and the world is all new for them.


    "Li, Ji. The woman of the tribe, and also the men, have seen the signals and the omens. The moon herself called for her long lost brother. The grass, in her movements, divines the things to come. They are warning us. The Words in the Name themselves reverberate strangely, as if awaiting. Every sister hears it." Then she looked at her oldest son. "Did you hear it too, Li?"


    Li doubted a second. Then assented. He knew, in some senses, the Name was for him something more profound, but more confusing than the primal emotion it evoked in the woman of his tribe. Nonetheless, he had also read the signs, and witnessed the omens.


    "Is your job to teach them, Li, Ji. Soon they will appear. Remember that we are their Older Siblings, and we have the duty to guide them. With love. Remember this."


    Confused, the boys nodded.


    "Who are they?" Asked Ji. His voice was almost lost in the creases of his mother''s clothes. The mother looked at the vast expanse, the abyss and the distant plains.


    "Travelers like us. But alas, we travel this world that is ours. They do not have one."


    But as she gazed the vast abyss, Li was certain to see in her eyes a complicated, hurt, abandoned look.


    "What did you see, Mother?" He asked himself.


    Up in the sky, the infinite stars blinked, and the sky whistled the things to come.

 Chapter Five: The Riders

    The horses advanced unimpeded by the difficult terrain. The riders, lost inside their thick garments, gazed at the vast plains with unblinking eyes. One of them cleared his mouth and said with a rather soft tone.


    "The trails keep going for at least twenty kilomentes". It was a woman. With her hand, as they trotted, she pointed to a distant mountain separated from other mountains by a few kilometers. "That''s where they lead to, probably."


    The other rider confirmed with his eyes the assertion from his partner, and assented.


    "The marks are clear and the trail is fresh. Carry the order and signal the troops. We will leave as soon as they arrive." said the male rider.


    The woman looked at his eyes for a second and immediatly after at the mountain and her baggage, from where she drew a little vial with a burner. Then she withdrew a long bamboo tube, and inserted the vial, she held the tube pointing to the sky, tilted a bit behind them, and lit the burner. A flash lighted the surroundings and the signal exploded with smoke in the sky. Almost immediatly after, the faint, undetectable sound of a company of soldiers and scouts started approaching.


    "Prepare your horse." Said the male rider, then hurried the horse and continued traveling.


    Soon they were at the feet of the mountain. There, the traces of a burial were scattered about, threwn across what appeared to be a the entrance of a cave.


    "What is this?" Said the woman. Her piercing gaze discerned funeral memorabilia placed on the entrance of the cave; woman''s braids, old tiger teeth, decorated bison skins, old dried fruit that dispersed a profound, spicy odor.


    "Seem like funeral rites. As we thought, in this mountain we will find another tribe." the man responded. Then, as he saw the woman''s intention of entering the cave


    "Don''t. It''s not ominous to disturb the dead, and even worse for the Death of the strange people that populate the lands far from our lands."


    The woman heard him and smirked, then derided his opinion.


    "There are no gods. Only the Might." And dismounted her horse. As she approached the cave, the man also dismounted and started following her, his gaze scanning the surroundings.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    Soon, they were inside the cave. It was a little cave no more than a dozen feet deep. The clarity of a little creek iluminated the insides with the undulating reflection of the light. The humid air was filled with certain strangeness.


    There, the riders could see a young girl laid against the rocks, covered in funeral clothes, surrounded by dried fruits. Then they saw on her face dark pustules agaist her clear skin that still hadn''t started descomposing.


    "Hell! Damned barbarians!" the riders, immeadiatly saw the pustules of some dark plague, and cursed. Rapidly fell back and left the cave.


    Outside, the male rider looked at his companion with unhid grimness.


    "You are too young." acidly said. Then left with his horse to look for some herbs and a nearby river to wash himself from the taboo.


    The female rider stubbornly stood and waited for her partner to dissapear. She knew what she did had been a foolish, reckless move, alas, her pride impeded her to fully form that tought. She looked at her mount and said to it.


    "Hey, Hisan, wait for me. I''ll go wash."


    When she found a nearby river, she washed herself fully. As taught, she gathered reeds and water fruits with clean essence as to flush from her taboo the taboo of the plague. While bathing, she felt her soft skin, and the mysteries of her body.


    As she had felt and learned since having reason and memory, every person had a taboo, a forbidden center where the mysteries of one''s own existence converged and extended through the body onto the world. As the center, it was delicate, and was meant to be secret, for it was easily polluted by the nefarious effect of the Others; other gods, other people, other essences. And the only way to extend the taboo and dispel it was the Might.


    But for her, maybe because of her steamrolling, overbearing and prideful character, the stories of the Might were the most enchanting, and filled her mind with unending derision for the other Mysteries.


    The Might, as was taught, was the extension of the taboo to the world around oneself, the process of making the world around one an extension of the personal, immanent center, a part of the body. And as the world was of one, all other mysteries were superceded, unlocked and comprehended.


    Ever since she learned these things, she always held in her mind her motto. "There are no Gods, only the Might. And no Mysteries, but the Might."


    But the craft was the craft, and as scout she had to follow the teachings. So she washed herself carefully in the agrid paste of her making, instintively scanning, both as scout and as a woman, for prying eyes in the reeds or in the tall grasses.


    Soon, a loud but discrete whistling sounded, a whistle so natural it meshed itself with the natural surrounding sounds, and that only trained ears that were actively waiting to hear it, would hear. It was the whistle of the hunter, inherited by the scouts, to call one to the other.


    When the male and female riders were reunited again, the female said.


    "Let''s go up the mountain to see what awaits us."


    The male nodded, but said. "A famelic tribe, probably. That''s the only thing these infinite plains have ever given us."

 Chapter Six: The Nameless Mountain

    As they moved up the mountain, traversing the difficult terrain with relative ease, a nostalgic feeling was taking hold in both riders.


    "What is with this sadness I feel?" Asked himself the male rider, as he was a man of few feelings but each one profound and silent. The usual coldness he faced his craft was slowly dissolving with the waning sun. With some suspicion and superstition he said; "The air is dense in essence here."


    The woman was lost in her reveries. The man thought loudly.


    "Your temple is weak, and your taboo is infested of external influences. The Might will never be more far from you, Ankhara."


    The woman looked at him with a gaze filled with disdain. Inside her, flashes and echoes of some great feeling assaulted her. A profound mystery. The Might! She started feeling extatic. But soon the mistep of her horse woke her up to the laughing gaze of her partner. A faint blush colored her cheeks.


    Soon they found a flat stretch of mountain where they could go with ease. Then they started inexorably losing themselves in their thoughts, conjured to them by the dense nostalgia the mountain evoked them.


    When they arrived at an open turn, they stopped a second and saw from the mountain the plains, where a regiment of soldiers were slowly advancing, carrying with them wooden cages, ropes, tents, provisions and fabrics.


    "Is this really necessary?" Muttered the female rider. In her eyes flashed memories of her life in the Hunate of Baatar.


    "We need to prosper. More tribes and their people are needed." The male rider refrained, but he himself doubted the veracity of the words they were sold in the Hunate.


    As far as they knew, they were the only advanced civilization in the continent, with the travelers and merchants telling tales of distant Kingdoms, countries and people. Certainly, the only thing they had always found were these famelic tribes scattered in the plains, in the tundras, in the steppes, almost all too hungry to talk, and almost all too few to have a decently complex language.


    Indeed, the world was vast, and new. So he sighed.


    * * *


    "Anaan, wake up the children", softly muttered a seemingly old man. The phlegm in his lungs made his words seem weak, drowned in water. As he looked inside his ger, he gazed lovingly at his woman, who waited with both her sons in her lap. The dense smell of incense permeated the air.


    As Anaan and her sons stood up, the man said.


    "Anaan, come on. We have to move the winds."


    With a soft push, she made her sons go outside the tent while she cleaned her hair, oily from the night''s sleep and the kids sweating. The man approached and muttered.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    "The day, the twenty stars, the broken ger..."


    He helped his wife get ready, powerfully but gently gripping the ceremonial vials, pouring the water from the skin boot, combing the long, dark and ashen hair, losing himself in the perfume of her entire being, a perfume that talked him of their travels, of the sweetness and acridness that was a woman, and the faint smell of their children, both the lost and the living.


    "Let''s go."


    Outside, the women and the men stood in ceremony. Some of the women sang already, preparing the Names they held in their own intimate manner. The men prepared the terrain; they raised against the upcoming winds the long skins that would beat with the hammering of the tempest, extended the large palm leaves that would gather water from the pouring, and started fires around them. Some men brought jewels to signify the stars, and some threw dried blood and soma to the fires as to make dense smoke.


    As their mother went to the circle, woman approached her, laughing. Both Ji and Li looked at her mother there, radiant, as she called the Imai, moving aside the mounting dark clouds that menaced the peace of the mountain.


    Then the real chanting started. The calling of the Names.


    "The Heavens are without a Name." Said, suddenly, Ji. "Come on, let''s dance too."


    Soon, they both were dancing along the other children; the little ladies pridefully followed the primal gathering of the Name, the first approaches to the Mysteries their tribe so easily aprehended. Li imagined most of them dreamed themselves as moving the gigantic clouds, extending their essence as it resonated with the secrets of the mountain. He saw how Ji danced funnily, like a little monkey, laughing. He sometimes imitated the men, and sometimes the women.


    The mounting clouds, still far away, gigantic in the sky, stopped approaching, and started disintegrating in rainbows with natural movements, as if it was the predetermined way of the world, smoothly as if the chanting and the dancing hadn''t anything to do with it, but one moment, Li thought he saw the invisible currents of the Mysteries working.


    Slyly, Li extended his hands, and remembering the feeling of his mother calling the Name, he too called the name:


    "Imai, Wind of the South, move the disintegrating clouds near, near, to refresh me."


    Then something happened, something that made his hair stand on end, and his bowels fill with the awesome sensation of adrenaline.


    The rapidly disintegrating clouds started approaching as if carried by a powerful wind, at a speed visible to the naked eye, to the aperture in the mountain they were in.


    In the corner of his eye, as he watched the drizzle clouds approach, Ji laughed uproariously, knowing it was finally him. The people of the tribe, instead, seemed not to notice, but one of the woman soon declared:


    "Imai! It was Imai!"


    Soon, all eyes where on their mother, that looked pensively at her oldest son, with both concern and happiness in her smile. Few seconds in, the drizzle started falling upon them all.


    Looking at each other craftily, both Li and Ji escaped to one of their huts. There, both laughed uproariously.


    "Soon! Soon!" Both rubbed their hands together, as flies. Then started playing, then reviewed their plans, and slept a little. Then, both of them climbed the mountain and sat atop.


    If one could be an eagle one could probably see two little kids laughing in atop of a nameless mountain, with the winds swirling playfully around them, carrying the clouds.


    Below, in some little path in the mountain, an old rider of a pair of riders muttered, surprised


    "The mysteries...!"


    And the other looked with her eyes open as the winds moved and the drizzle fell.


    "This is a tribe of mages!"


    And only her fellow rider and the solitude of the mountain saw the obsessed glitter in her eyes. And only the critters of the mountain heard the march they preceded. The march of change.