From alt.pub.dragons-inn Tue Mar 15 23:16:34 1994
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From: rev2@po.CWRU.Edu (Robert E. Vogel)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [Azend/Zjiria] Questions, Answers
Date: 15 Mar 1994 04:32:05 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
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ADMIN: Glory to the Gods and Goddesses of Generica (bet you can't say that
five times fast), this actually isn't a repost!  Yes, this is a genuine
addition to the story, much belated story I should add and apologize to all
for it.  Like those before it, this is copyrighted by Robert Vogel, 1994,
for the story, ideas, thread, characters, and movie rights (of course, if
anyone REALLY wants the movie rights...).
	Enough!  On with the show!
***

>	"Well, my friend Azend, have you seen your liking yet?  Come, we
>prepare for the celebration!"

	"Sarken, it is possible you have the certain words about certain
words of mine, if I may ask?"
	Sarken looked at me a moment, then nodded.
	"Go ahead.  Ask away."
	"Do you know of a place called Generica?"
	Sarken replied slowly, his tone cautious, "I may...have heard of it."
	"Can you tell me much of this place?"
	Sarken smiled, then rested himself on a nearby rock.  With a tilt
of his head, he regarded me.
	"I can tell you some.  But what would you be wanting with Generica
in the first place?"
	I exhaled in a puff.  Counter made and it looks like I would have
to lay down my prizes one at a time to loosen his tongue.
	"Before I was...sent here, I was told to go there."
	Sarken's hummed deep in his throat, his chin resting on his fist,
his eyes never leaving mine.  He said nothing.
	I waited.  Although the advantage was his, the game would be mine,
both style of play and the win in the end.
	Sarken seemed to understand that I needed a bit more of a prompt.
	"Why weren't you sent directly to Generica?  You are far from it,
my friend, and the walk is long, I assure you."
	"I am certain that I can find transportion."
	Sarken was straight-forward enough, but no diplomat.  In his shoes,
I would have said something along the lines of "I hope your being put here
hasn't inconvienced you."
	"You didn't answer my question, friend."  That last word was laced
with a trace of anger.  I quickly filed away that Domaeki, or at least
Sarken, do not like their question to be sidetracked.  "Why weren't you 
sent directly to Generica?"
	"It was not in the power of the magician to do so."
	A half-lie, I admit, for the magician was certainly powerful
enough, it was merely that he lacked the information about where to put me.
	"Too bad.  The sweat your magician needed to perform that task will
be much less than the sweat on your brow by the time you finally arrive."
	Unspoken, I heard his addition, "if you ever arrive" in his eyes. 
He had said it bluntly enough that I could tell he did not believe me, at
least not fully.  Mayhaps it would be best to sooth him with some more
information.
	I waited a beat to let Sarken know that the weight of his tone had
sunk in, then, "My good word for the magician is that he did the best he
could, given his chance and his choices."
	"Indeed.  Maybe I overestimated the power of magicians."
	It was said in half-curiousiness, and I figured that he had let the
matter slide.
	"But then, we Domaeki don't deal with magicians.  They can't be
trusted."
	Then again, maybe he hadn't let it slide.
	"How do you know, excuse me, you do know now, how did you know that
you could trust him to put you in the correct location?"
	"His power has never failed him before in such matters to which he
lays claim."
	"That wasn't what I meant.  His loyalty."
	"Was certainly not with he who I opposed."
	"I see."
	Sarken was quiet and I realized that I needed to be more aggressive
to get any answers.
	"Do you know where Generica is, by direction, distance, and ways
in-between?"
	"I know some."
	"What can you tell me?"
	"Not enough to help you I wager."
	I fixed him with the same direct look and adopted the same direct
tone he used on me.
	"That wasn't my question, friend.  I don't want to know now what
will you tell me, but what can you tell me."
	Sarken paused a moment then burst out laughing.
	"I like you, friend!  You have gall!"
	He pointed off to one side.
	"Generica lies many leagues away in the direction that the sun goes
down."
	"I don't always trust my first instructions, or my first
directions."
	Sarken smiled.
	"No, this is true, for that is the direction those before us came."
	"Came or were sent?"
	He fixed me with a look.  Although not hostile to me, his cheer was
gone as he remembered what was back there so many years ago.  He was very
serious and a bit solemn.
	"We Domaeki were pressured long before I was born to leave the more
civilized lands.  Since then, we've been moving farther into the mountain
range."	I nodded.  His people have been on the move, pushed away by
civilization ever since they became annoyances instead of threats.  Many
barbarian raiders who had lived in the eastern mountains of Inasta had 
migrated into the valley over when Inasta had spread its influence.  A 
generation later, they had to move again when Inasta settlers, backed by
Inasta military, came into the region.  Even now, they must be moving,
their way of life a continuous migration.
	But I felt neither pity for their nor the Domaeki's plight.  I had
visited some of the villages that they had raided and passed by within
sight of smaller villages that had been leveled by their attacks.
	"I have one more question, Sarken."
	He looked at me, a bit guardedly, once again suspicious.
	"When you attacked the Baals, several of your men died.  But you
merely stripped them of their possessions like you looted the Baal outpost.
All except the torques, which you handled with great care."
	As I spoke, Sarken relaxed, his face calm once again, and becoming
almost at peace when I mentioned the torques.
	"Why-"
	"Why do we treasure the torques and not the bodies of our fallen
companions?  We are nothings, merely shells, although we might someday in
our life hold great power, great beauty, or great wonder.  But all that 
is lost when we die.  So we are nothings.  But our torques are our essence,
what lives on after we die.  In each torque is the holding of that woman
in the night, of the running of that horse we rode."
	He was preaching now and I was fascinated.
	"So that when we die, our torques go back to our people, to be
given as seen fit.  And so our lives and memories live on, in the torques. 
This torque I wear is stained in the blood of our enemies and our own, worn by
our leaders for many years.  When our last leader died, he gave it to me.  It 
was a great honor."
	I pondered on the last two sentences, particularly the former one. 
Did Sarken mean that his last leader gave it to Sarken in his dying breath,
or that he had left it to Sarken in a will, or did somehow the dead 
leader in the torque come to be worn only by Sarken?
	That last bit had me thinking on a whole new tangent.  The torque
could be the one alive in Sarken's viewpoint, and since he was the one who
found it on the battlefield, he could claim it chose him.
	I broke my musing to listen back in to what Sarken was saying.
	"...as a child, but when one can prove himself, he becomes a man,
and is so rewarded by a wearing of the torque.  Then he must complete the
history scribed, written, or somehow carved into the torque, before adding 
his own."
	He fingered his own torque as he spoke, "This twist was added by
Dachon when he won the archery contest, and the black notchs here are for
each of his wives.  Three notchs, although the first one is very shallow.  
That is because Nameni died in childbirth, her first child.  The child didn't 
survive the night, but that I know only because it is on the torque Risten 
wears, which is the same one that Nameni also wore.  The torques are well
bonded for Risten has born my daughter this last spring a year ago."
	Coincidence, an act of the intelligent torques, or was this a
pre-arranged thing by the people closest to the Domaeki elders?
	I interrupted Sarken before he could get going again on the history
of his torque.
	"You speech seems to denote a lack of possession and possessiviness
concerning the torques.  Neither it nor you possess each other."
	Sarken looked blankly at me.
	"Of course not.  It is an item, and we are the individual.  It
needs us to have a memory to build on as we need it to store ourselves
within."
	He opened his mouth to say more, but he suddenly looked
back to the camp.
	"Hear that!  The drums have began, the dancing have began!  Come,
friend, this is a night for celebration, not for talk and thought of why
and now.  For tonight and maybe this is our last night alive, we will live!"
	With that he motioned me to follow and quickly lead the way deep
into the camp.  Shaking my head, my thoughts still awhirl, I followed.

ADMIN: Comments, questions, confusions- oops, have plenty of that!  E-mail
me at rev2@po.cwru.edu.
-- 
I would think that I was dead but for the pain...
     ---Rabied Rat's Revenge