Legends of the South

South of Byhr, there are lands in which people don't fight. The stories tell of a place reigned by peace, of a place party to the leisurely conversations of happy men. Legend has it that there is no strife in the South, that, unlike in the Midlands, there is an abundance of resources. Comfortable living is possible without competition.

Master Jeuni Huros, juggler, drunk, and closet romantic, never doubted the stories he'd heard.

For as long as he could remember, he'd wanted to travel beyond Byhr's forests, beyond the trenches and border outposts. He'd wanted to travel to the peaceful South, to see the Shaded Orchard—that was its name in the tales.

Once, eight years ago, Jeuni decided he had had enough.

He was tired of the harsh northern sun, of the harsh northern moon, of the constant wars, of not knowing whether his hometown belonged to the Byhr Empire or to the Harnecian Confederacy. He was tired of shifting boundaries, of military parades, of soldiers from various nations desecrating his home in different ways. The South, he knew, would be free of fighting. He could pursue his two passions—juggling and drinking—in peace. The South was Jeuni's paradise, and, at the age of nineteen, having become independent of his family, he set out to find that paradise.

He was back in his town that evening, turned back by Byhryn border patrols.

Since that day, eight years passed. Jeuni did not make anymore attempts to escape the war-torn Midlands. He lay low whenever the Harnecians, Byhr's eastern neighbors, occupied his town and performed raucously in the tavern those days it was filled with Byrhryn troops. It was not a matter of political preference nor one of necessity—Jeuni merely considered himself a Byhryn, believing that he had been born into the Empire. Of course, he couldn't be sure. One could never be sure. Written history had ended roughly fifty years earlier—again, one couldn't be sure—with the formation of the Byhr Empire. The practice of recording events had ended with the declaration that Byhr was the ultimate nation, that it would rule the world in short order, that utopia would follow in the wake of its conquest, and that the past no longer mattered.

That line of reasoning—employed consistently in military speeches on the topic—seemed dubious at best to Jeuni, but he couldn't figure out why else the Byhrate Council would ban written records.

The ban had extended beyond historical texts fifteen years back when a certain Master Limm had hosted a forum in the capital about searches. Limm had questioned Byhr's ability to judge whether or not a book contained historical references—what if fiction resembled history? Would the hard-working novelist be punished for his contributions to culture?

Byhr's response had been to issue a declaration that the perfect world didn't need culture, thank you very much, and then to have Limm and all the other participants in Limm's discussion hanged. Jeuni was only twelve years old at the time, and his memory of the events was fuzzy, but he remembered someone reading the words on the wanted posters:

"Non Limm, Harnecia-minded traitor and enemy of the state..."

"Harnecia-minded."

That was Byhr's term for someone who was educated. Thanks to Master Limm's forum, Byhryn troops raided every nook of the country, burning every text they could find. When one too many captains reported that removing every book from a library was a pain, libraries and schools became funeral pyres for the texts they contained. Education became purely oral and literacy declined. Reading and writing were not explicitly outlawed, but the medium itself became near extinct, traded only in the blackest of markets.

Jeuni recalled being greatly upset by the draconian decision when it was made—it meant less contact time with his classmates—but fifteen years later, he hardly cared. Having fun on stage, earning cash easy, and drinking to excess were the three pillars of his lifestyle, and they were all he needed to stay content.

They were all he needed, that is, until the evening that a giant in exotic garb observed his juggling act. That evening, in a matter of hours, Jeuni had his audience routed, his secret discovered, and his doorstep stained red. That evening had started like any other—a few drinks in the tavern ahead of his show—and it had ended with him laying the giant's guts out on the ground. It was not the spilling of blood that had shaken Jeuni, for he had seen much worse on the battlefields as a sixteen-year-old draftee. It wasn't so much the loss of customers, either, nor was it the giant's rudely inquisitive manner of speech. It wasn't that the giant had discovered his secret, and it wasn't that the giant had forced him into a fight he would rather not have fought.

There was one thing about that evening that haunted Jeuni.

As he had stepped back from the empty, bloodstained armor of his opponent, his conjured door disappearing behind him, he had seen the smatterings of blood on the ground. Not just drops and puddles. Shapes. He could still see them with his eyes closed; they were burned into his vision in the same vermillion with which they'd been drawn. Letters.

"I can show you the South."

A day had passed since the encounter.

Jeuni lay on a straw cot in the corner of his shack, tossing and turning in restless nightmares. He had not risen in the morning and he had no plans of going to work. The wounds he had received on stage the previous day were fully healed, dealt with by the bartender's spells. The headache from the shoddy Western alcohol had already departed him. All that remained to interfere with peaceful sleep were those words, imprinted in his brain. Whenever he woke from his nightmares, he saw, through his window, the broken cobblestones outside. Cobblestones he had spent all night scrubbing clean of blood. He saw, in the opposite corner of his shack, the blue plate-mail of the giant. Seeing these things, he remembered the reality and closed his eyes, seeking solace in sleep. In sleep, however, he saw the conclusion of the fight again and again, only in his dreams he did not bow his head, and he looked on in wide-eyed horror as his opponent was torn into microscopic shreds.

Dreams of blood and pain drove Jeuni into a feverish state and his imagination began spiraling...

"I think you know that quite well," shrugged the giant, dropping his cloak and reaching for a hilt at his hip. He unsheathed his sword, longer than the juggler was tall, and leveled it at Jeuni.

"You use that to dig flowers?" was Jeuni's retort, the only words he could think to utter.

"Why, yes. Now," continued the man, as he plunged the blade into the cobblestones and fished a pack of seed out from pocket of his discarded cloak, "I shall show you what they grow in the Shaded Orchard."

The juggler chuckled uncontrollably in his sleep, turned over, and suddenly he was in the tavern.

"Damn it, man," hissed Jeuni, "first you show up here and scare the pants off my audience, and now you're sitting here watching me drink! What is it that you want?" Having finished his refill, he slammed the empty glass down on the counter.

"Drunk already?" the man asked, dismissing Jeuni's angry words with a scornful snort.

"The hell's that supposed to mean? You don't want me to drink? Fine job you're doing of stopping me, look, I'm reduced to this Western piss and soon—"

"Well, it’s less draining to use the teleportation magic if the baggage is sober," the giant replied with a twinkle in his eye, "and for long distances, like our imminent journey to the South, it’s best to preserve energy."

Several episodes similar to these repeated themselves in Jeuni's mind, his fever further distorting the scene each time. The day passed and he remained on his cot, sweating furiously, laughing and crying in shifts, unsure of whether the liquid on the cobblestone path was blood or wine. He remained in that state for almost two whole days, not drinking, not eating, trying to sleep but constantly waking, trying to wake up but always falling into yet deeper sleep.

* * *

Byhr's recipe for a better world in the Midlands included hundreds of laws. These laws outlawed many things, including the recording of events, the composition of poetry or music pertaining to war, the glorification of any aspect of another nation's culture, civilian resistance to invading armies, walking too quickly, and the eating of chickens. The recipe was long and complex, but bans were the main ingredient.

Byhr's neighbors disagreed with this take on the new world, and that was the main reason why the new world had yet to be constructed. For fifty years, the nascent Empire of Good struggled to keep itself alive, despite owning sixty percent of the Midlands. Being at constant war with every surrounding country and all the independent city-states within those meant a constant stream of attacks and sabotages. It was a sizable accomplishment for the Byhrate Council to have defended itself for so long, all the while aggressively expanding its grasp and solidifying its control over its citizens. Though it was a constant battle for the Holy Empire of Byhr, it was a winning one, and gradually they were taking the world.

But what of the Midlands inhabitants? They were sick of being thrown at each other. They wanted peace. Many with the means and money made the pilgrimage to the South, to that legendary Shaded Orchard. Those with neither the money nor the means either snuck out of their country or ended up in the ranks of its army as Jeuni had, fighting against others in a similar predicament. Those who left—be it with or without money—never returned.

There's another legend about the South: decades ago, a heroic Harnecian named Tyff Noi made the trip to the Shaded Orchard and sent back his journal. It took up residence in the Harnecian Hall of Trophies, where none save the country's rulers and their most trusted courtiers could access it. Tyff himself never returned to the Midlands, the story goes, though many theorize that he lives on somewhere, working to give the lucky a chance to escape southward.

Jeuni, being the romantic he was, had always been a supporter of this theory. And so it was that when he finally woke, two days after killing the giant, and put two and two together, he cried out,

"Damn it! I killed Tyff?!"

After this exclamation, he calmed down, seeing the armor in the corner of his shack and noting that it was not the armor of a Harnecian. And he remembered the giant's voice—it was not that of an Easterner. And he remembered the giant's physical characteristics, unlike those of any man he'd ever encountered. The huge body, the wild hair and eyes—they did not belong to any nation. The giant could not have been Tyff.

As Jeuni was settling back onto his cot, relieved that he had not accidentally killed his hero, sounds of singing reached him. At first he dismissed the sound as mere fantasy, as bits of nightmare creeping into his waking consciousness. Minutes passed, and Jeuni found himself still awake, still lying on his cot, still listening to the song. He felt his mind clearing, or perhaps becoming so full of the song that there was no room left for delusion or fantasy. It was a beautiful song. He pushed himself into a sitting position. Another minute passed, and his fever dissipated.

The juggler rose quickly, all terrors dispelled, all nightmares vanquished, his mind set on one thing alone: finding the source of the song. He wrapped his cloak around himself and opened the shack door. Broken lyrics reached him as he stepped outside. He couldn't make sense of them, but one word stood out from the rest, a word whose shape was burned into his mind: south.

Listening for a direction, Jeuni ascertained that the song was drifting in from the east. His home, situated in the slummy outskirts, was already on the eastern edge of town. The singer was probably somewhere in the wooded wilderness beyond. Jeuni began running. He leapt over the creek that formed the eastern border of the town and disappeared into the pine forest, dodging bushes and rock outcroppings as he went. There were no other people in the forest, just trees, boulders, the occasional hawk, and the even rarer squirrel. And the song, growing ever louder, ever clearer.

In his efforts to reach the source, he moved quickly, not lightening his step in order to make out the words.

Ten minutes after he'd left his shack, he stood panting, hands on knees, at the base of a small hill. The song had just ended. Gasping for breath, Jeuni stood as straight as he could in order to examine the pale figure atop the hill.

She stood with one side to Jeuni, eyes closed and mittened hands clasped together in front of her chest. She had long, pale blue hair—a blue not seen in dyes—which was blowing back from her in a breeze that affected nothing else in the forest. She was clad in a white coat that started with a fur-lined hood and ended at her knees, almost reaching the tops of her white boots. As Jeuni stood there watching, puzzling over the way in which this girl's hair was blowing, she started singing again. Hearing the song with perfect clarity for the first time, the juggler was blown away.

The sound of the girl's voice was far more notable to Jeuni than her blue hair or odd garb, or even the non-existent wind which enveloped her. It was the sound of clouds rolling over a meadow. It was the sound of lightning striking down a god. It was the sound of waves crashing against the cliffside. It was the sound of a bee crying. It was the sound of gold pieces jingling from a slot. It was the sound of honey cascading down the side of a teacup.

The words themselves were almost an afterthought:

"A southern wind came to me
And it breathed upon me
It chilled me and I loved it for that.
Blowing back my hair, caressing me,
It froze me and I loved it for that.
Telling me its tales, its sad history…
The wind was a chronicler and I was its book
It came to me, recording in my memory
The legend of the frozen south."

When she had concluded the song, the girl paused. But this time she did not start again. As the juggler looked on, her hands dropped to her sides and she turned to face him, her eyes opening as slowly as she had uttered the words of the song. Jeuni looked into the girl's deep red eyes, the red of the giant's blood, and knew immediately that all his romantic fantasies were meaningless. More pain lay In those eyes than Jeuni had ever imagined could exist. In those eyes lay a plea more desperate than any wretch's cries for help. In those eyes lay a truth, Jeuni realized, a truth that precluded the world for which he had always hoped:

The Shaded Orchard was nowhere.

Master Jeuni Huros, juggler, drunk, and, more than anything else, a romantic, shut his eyes tight, shutting out the girl's red pupils, shutting out the unwanted truth. He gritted his teeth as his fever, exhaustion, hunger, and dehydration all returned at once, causing him to sway and fall to his knees. He wanted to hear the song again despite the sorrow of its words. He wanted to see the girl's eyes again, despite his fear of what they held. He knew what he needed to do—he needed to travel south, he needed to find the answer to the question of why the girl's hair was blowing in a still forest. He needed to answer her plea and come to terms with her truth.

But try as he might, he couldn't open his eyes again. He felt his hips sway and give out under him, and he fell over, unconscious.