At the western edge of the world, facing the vast and green Thalassic Ocean, in ancient cities and fishing villages and terraced monasteries on the rocky shores and islands of that littoral, lived a musical and pious people known as the Laramidians. They were a not a people of much stature, either physical or political, standing only one and a half meters high and ignored by the other peoples of the world. They had skin the color of a dry leaf, dark curly hair, and gray eyes, except the “sun-born” whose eyes were the color of amber.
Taught by the sea, they were witty and quick to learn. Laughter was the spice of their speech. They enjoyed roasting each other with gentle insults, yet behind this was a deep sense of mutual respect and honor. One teased about sexual misadventures, failures at the seine, unattractive physical features, poor relations with relatives. But, it was a banter taboo to bring up being beaten in a fight, the deaths of loved ones, rape, or being ill-favored by the gods.
If the god Maja heard a violation of banter taboos she would bring the selfsame misery back on the violator. She cultivated favors from all the other gods (if the fables were true, mostly through blackmail) and she would call in these favors to punish mortals. The Laramidians feared few gods more than Maja.
In the middle kingdoms, the Laramidians called themselves Mijan in their own language. It was Mojan around the southern cape, where the royals were all sun-born, and Miyen in the chiefdoms of the north. Still, they were Laramidians in the Old Tongue, the language of the First People, preserved in ancient texts and spoken mainly by scholars, monks, and wandering sages.
But, the Laramidians who fished and farmed and sang and prayed to their thousand gods had little use for archaic tomes. They were happy to feast and dance and drape garlands over their banisters, celebrating a dozen monthly holidays and a dozen more strewn about the calendar. Each with their own colors and foods and songs and gods, traditions often reaching back into the First World, but everyday Laramidians didn’t care much for that history. They were simple people, people not of the First World but of Kampania, living by its high tides and seasons and the movements of its beasts.
The scholars of Laramidia kept to their studies, cloistered in urban academies. The monks kept their farms and wineries, speaking to their parishioners only in the Mijan tongue about the thousand gods. And the wandering sages kept themselves busy traveling to far lands, murmuring in the ears of Laramidian monarchs, and scouting for apprentices who might pass down their ancient wisdom.
Laramidian ovens kept baking fish pies and titan steaks, their musicians continued playing at festivals and daily in the streets, their tailors wove robes of feathers and sewed clothes of linen and leather. They were insulated from the events of the larger world, the intrigues and wars of the Inner Seas to the east, by the high and wild inland mountains of Laramidia.
Even foreign ships were largely unknown beyond the ports of the southern cape. Mijan sailors roamed north to their Miyen cousins and south beyond the cape along the Thalassic coast of Andea, but rarely ventured east into the inner seas. From there came only dubious legends, strange gods, unseemly spices, exotic potentates, and long-defeated menaces.
—×—
The story begins seventeen years into the life of a Larimidian boy named Bram Swanjamin, son of Habram the fisher and Elenthea the feathersmith, four years into his apprenticeship to the wandering sage Perisfin—which duration had stifled the old man’s wandering more than his practiced demeanor could disguise from those who knew him.
But, Perisfin had finally given in to wandering, taking a sturdy cape ship to the port of Duris with a promise to return to Safran as swiftly as he could. He wouldn’t give Bram a reason for leaving, but the boy suspected the old man was growing weary of him.
“If a wanderer does not wander,” Perisfin had said, shouldering his leather pack, “can he call himself a wanderer?”
Bram’s father was glad to see the old man go. He hadn’t wanted to apprentice his oldest boy to a sage, but sages were not to be opposed. They knew the old names of the gods, and their genealogies all the way back to the Great God. They were revered by monks and by traders who relied on the news of commerce the sages carried with them. Anger a sage, and you might find your sacrifices unproductive, your wine and grain more expensive, your relationship with merchants soured.
“You’ll see the real Thalassic,” his father said, standing beside him on the dock as the cape ship set sail, “like a real Mijan man. You’ll wear your hands on the seine, learn the winds and tides, man the guns against sea dragons.”
Bram nodded and forced himself to give his father a smile. He didn’t want to haul seine. He didn’t want the slime of fish on his hands. And, he really did not want to fight sea dragons. He wanted to continue learning about the world, about the lands around the Inner Seas, the First People’s arrival in Kampania.
“Your brother Kori can show you the ropes.” His hand squeezed the boy’s shoulder. Bram blushed. His younger brother was a real Migan man, a fisher who never read a word outside a primer when he’d learned his letters. Their father was proud of Kori. His shoulders shrank.
The fisherman patted his son’s back. “And you can teach him all the old names of things. He likes that. He looks up to you.”
Bram smiled for real this time. His father always knew the right thing to say.
“And, who could blame him? One day, he’ll have a wandering sage for a brother. He’ll probably pay cheaper prices than anyone else in Safran.”
Bram laughed and they turned to walk back to the house built by some distant grandfather, painted a defiant blue for generations in a neighborhood of orange and green, banisters that had been garlanded for centuries. Kori would get the house instead of him, something else his brother probably loved him for. Wandering sages had no homes. They stayed with monks and scholars wherever they went.
“Wanderers don’t wander,” his father said. Bram felt his eyebrows scrunch. He looked up to see his father working something out in his head.
“They go with a purpose,” he said and nodded. “Perisfin knows where he is going and why. When he’s done with that, he’ll comes back, and he’ll have something to tell you.”