Mamon and Naia were together. And they gave each other strength. They gave all the Yemars around them strength. They helped them however they could.
Naia was one with the healing herbs. They were her Yemarian element. And that meant that she was a great healer. She secretly, in the dark of the night, prepared healing potions for the Yemars who were sick. She used her words and her kindness to sooth their minds and hearts as much as they could be soothed. She picked up their broken pieces and she helped them hold themselves together. Everyone was much grateful for her.
Mamon was one with fire. That meant they were one with the way a campfire or hearth brought everyone together to share stories. And they were one with the way fire hungered, always, never satisfied. They were one with the way fire destroyed the old in order to usher in new growth.
All the Yemars together used their cunning and their cleverness and their trickery to fool the Uzras, to protect each other, and to win little tiny victories against the Uzras. The Yemars used their trickery to gain an upper hand against the Uzras, the only upper hand they had. And they used their lies to keep themselves and each other safe. They kept their hearts secret from the Uzras. And everything important they concealed.
One day the Uzras were thinking of how to fortify their lands against any war the Yemars may start. And they got it in their heads to build a Great Wall between the lands where most of the Yemars lived and toiled and the lands where most of the Uzras lived and luxuriated.
In order to build that wall, they needed to dam a great river. Mamon and Naia and two more Yemars named Caliom and Eren made their way in secret through the cover of the night to the river. There they saw how vast and powerful and beautiful the river was. And there they saw how it was a piece of Puri still alive.
They mourned greatly for the river, for when it was dammed that piece of Puri the Great Parent would be dead. But they knew that Puri would still live on elsewhere. And they vowed to make a piece of the river live on as well.
They gathered in a circle and conducted their magic. Using their magic they lifted a ball of good, clean water from the river. In the ball the water rushed and flowed as if it was in a river itself. And the four comrades secreted it away deep in the bedrock of the earth, where no-one would ever find it. Not until the day where the river could be free again and that piece of water could join the rest of its kindred in the river.
The sun shone and surveyors from the Uzras came upon the forest brush where the four Yemars were standing. Karkion demanded to know what they were doing there, so far away from their work. Mamon answered that they were here to bid goodbye to the river before it was damned up forever.
Karkion was enraged, and demanded that the four rebels be punished.
And so they were. In the meantime Wolver grew stronger and more powerful. In the meantime Hari grew more and more, longer and longer. In the meantime Mamon grieved for their children.
After the punishment, there was a great feast to prepare for. The Uzra man Spirug had captured for himself a concubine. She was a beautiful Yemarian girl named Arder. And she was to be initiated and that required great ceremony.
Filla and Naia were the ones who were to prepare Arder for the initiation ceremony. The three young women were together in the preparation room. And they talked.
Arder held great sadness in her heart for her homeland and her family and her community. She held a great longing within herself to go back home and be with her people again. She held a great hatred for Spirug. But this she could not tell to anyone. She only voiced it to Filla and Naia, in that private room, away from Ryan’s sight.
Filla and Naia understood. They too missed their homelands and all the people who they left behind. They sympathized with beautiful Arder and gave her their strength. They listened to her tears and her ranting. They told her what tips and tricks they had learned for dealing with the Uzras. They let her know that she was still loved.
Arder also said that Spirug was the one who had killed her brother, in years past. She stated that she much grieved for her brother and it filled her with disgust to think of sleeping with the one who had murdered him. Arder recounted him as a jovial, protective, caring man who was worn down by the injustices of the world. And she stated that she now wished to have died with him so she could be spared this humiliation.
Filla and Naia listened. Filla said to Arder that surely her brother was in Oellon, and surely she would see him again one day. If not in this life then in the days after the final battle, when all beings of this world would be dead and a new world would emerge. Naia told Arder to hold on until this final war, and then she would have all her revenge and all her humiliation would be washed away in blood.
Arder revealed that she did not like blood, even the blood of wicked men. But also that she would like very much to spill the blood of the men who caused herself and her people so much suffering.
Naia and Filla helped Arder bathe and they anointed her skin with fine, expensive oils and they washed her hair in a broth of herbs that left it bright and shining. They powdered her face and painted her lips and put kohl around her eyes. They braided her hair into an intricate, woven pattern and laced up her new, white dress. They put jewels around her throat and her wrists. Jewels that felt to her like chains.
And they gave her a secret gift. They had gathered a sack of herbs for her. Herbs that if she brewed into a tea and drank, she could be rid of any unwanted cells growing within her. They gave her these herbs surreptitiously and told her that she could always go to them for more.
And so Arder was initiated into being a concubine. And Mamon served strong drinks at the ceremony. And she hid all her rage behind a docile smile. And Spirug never knew what was truly happening within her. He never knew how she was planning her revenge right there as she stood smiling at him and nodding at his words. She was planning his destruction.
And soon it was time to get started on the wall. The Uzras hired an Uzra man named Derlion to be in charge of the builders of the wall. He was an expert architect who could design the most impenetrable of buildings. He had with him an army of Yemars who he was in charge of, who he forced to build the wall.
He forced them to pull and carry stones, to cut and carry wood for the scaffolding, to build scaffolding and to pile rocks on top of rocks. He forced them to work faster and faster and faster, until they were overcome by their work and it was destroying them from the inside. He forced them to work perfectly, and would not allow them to make even the smallest mistake.
Mamon saw this, and they saw how great and impenetrable the wall was becoming. They knew that the wall would not break and nothing would overcome it. Not if it was being built as it was. And they knew that the Yemars would not stand a chance in this final battle without intervention.
So they vowed to intervene. They took the form of a young woman and went down to where the workers were sleeping. They started singing into the darkness. And in this darkness the workers rose. And they were entranced by the beautiful singing. And they followed the voice away into the wood where the chief builder would not find them.
There Mamon explained to them that the Yemars would have no hope of winning the war if the wall was built according to the builder’s specifications. The workers were loathe to seal the fate of their people. So they made a plan, along with Mamon.
They would hide out in the woods for one week. And when they came back they would be dazed and would act as if they had been enchanted away from their work. If they pretended to be enchanted, then the chief builder Derlion would not punish them, for it was not their fault. But the Uzra would look far and wide for this enchantress, and would never find her.
And so Derlion would have to rush in order to complete the wall within the deadline that Karkion set out for him. And in this rush he would get careless and the wall would be built with faults and would slowly crack and crumble apart.
They all agreed to the plan and they set out to hide themselves for one week. Mamon went to the Uzras by day to do all their duties for them. And by night they came to the workers hidden in the woods. In this time Mamon fell in love with and laid with one of the workers, Siddel, and they created a child together. The child was growing within Mamon when the week was up.
The chief builder ranted and raved at his dazed, confused workers. But he could clearly see that they had been enchanted so he chose to not punish them. He set them back to work. But because of the rush, the work was sloppy and the wall had cracks within it. Cracks that the water could seep through as it froze and thawed.
Derlion did not tell Karkion of the enchantment on his workers, for fear of invoking the king’s wrath.
Mamon had their child, with Naia and Eren as the birth attendants. The child was a sweet little one. He was in the form of a horse. The child had eight legs, like the eight legs of the four men who carried a body to the funeral boat. And he was a sweet little horse. The older people named him Lewinn. And they took care of Lewinn as much as they could, keeping him hidden.
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