Subproject index
Episode 8: something about shepherds
Diary of Kaidan Žambey
Episode 8
20 reli 3422 (néronden)
Zola to C.K.
I wasn’t going to write, but it was a wild enough evening to warrant report, and my boat-friends are currently still sleeping it off on the benches…
We arrived at Zola late yesterday afternoon. I expected to find nothing there, and my first sight of the ramshackle dock, with the remnants of market-day oozing out of it by power of a few depressed-looking rowing boats, seemed to confirm my expectation. Most of the passengers went left from the river on the recommendation of one of the boatmen, to where we could see a few roofs and wisps of smoke.
However, to the right we saw a trickle of people milling generally uphill that seemed too generous a flow for such a backwater, and a stroll up the gently-sloping riverbank after them revealed a fair crowd assembled on a green in front of a lopsided
aďetonáe on the outskirts of town. They were sharing food, which was laid out on blankets and planks and being sizzled over a few fires. It looked like a picnic party in the Niëma Nezi ‒ just with a lot less money.
Zevy sprang to life and bounded up to the nearest revellers. “Brac Eleďei!” he cried. “Of course! Today is vigil of Brac Eleďei!
Dobrî cuendî, zeveu!” He was embracing people as if he had known them all his life.
It was the first I’d realised Zevy is an Eleďe. It struck me that, through this faith, a foreigner could walk into a strange little town with no purpose or invitation and immediately find as warm a welcome as I had ever seen.
I wasn’t as much in the crowd as hovering around it with Mëfa, who had slipped the chaperone normally assigned to her by Captain Sfica. But we had arrived with Zevy, so we began to be embraced and fervently greeted too. Not knowing what to do, and feeling quite hungry, I followed suit. A man dressed in a grey robe I took to be the priest grabbed hold of my arm and welcomed me with gusto, asking where I was from.
Frankly, I was already finding it all a bit cultish, and found myself lying that I was from Solhai. He looked quizzically at me. I asked whether there was an inn up this side of town, throwing in a few vaguely southern accent features and immediately regretting it.
“I’m afraid there’s no room at the inn,” he replied, wearing an expression I couldn’t quite read, “but you and your wife could always sleep in the stable.”
Mëfa and I exchanged a look, part embarrassed, part confused. Was it an Eleďe thing to house guests like animals? It felt like a test and I hadn’t the faintest clue how to pass. Thankfully Zevy had circled back to our vicinity and was able to supply the laughter that we hadn’t fully realised was being elicited.
“Hilarious,
řemát lë,” he said, and nudged me. We laughed a bit too much, while I tried to remember details of the bizarre foreign doctrine the Eleďî adhere to. Something about shepherds. By Calto, I was hungry! Say something about shepherds, said my stomach.
“I’m actually, er, a shepherd, so, yep, great, cheers,
řemát lë, we’ll take the stable…!”
Mëfa raised an eyebrow so high it nearly ascended off her head. My mumblings had had the effect of putting a sign around my neck saying “will sell soul for free dinner”. The priest – who was gripping on to me with weird intensity ‒ burst out laughing again, even harder this time. “A shepherd, with those hands? A masseur, more like,” he said, “but I like you, Gn Solhai. You can stay and share food with us. Tomorrow we celebrate the raising of our Lord Eleď into the Heavens… Tonight we eat and share in our joy, and all are welcome.”
I was suspicious. What was the price? I had nothing to share. What would Řavcaëna think? But Zevy had already accepted and started shovelling food into my arms. Soon I was juggling a few chicken legs, a crumbly ham salad filled with nuts and croutons I was cupping in my bare hand, and half a folded
zer filled with goat’s cheese. I was considering conversion, until I started being bothered by wasps. (Thanks, Řavcaëna.)
“We have music,
řemát lë,” Zevy was announcing to the priest, who was now arranging for things to be brought in and out of a sizeable house. “I know many sacred songs, and he is… rather good,” he said, pointing to me. “He will… picked it up.”
The priest was pleased. I was sensing the opportunity for free lodgings, and I could tell Zevy was too. It’s a musician thing.
“Can you play
žažarkî?” the priest asked. I was surprised at the request, and I didn’t know for sure if Zevy could, but I was quick to pipe up.
“Many,
řemát lë ‒ any you like,
řohuepë, huepë, smirë, dunisë, dinisë, and anything in between…!” I spat through my mouthful. The priest beamed. “All we need is somewhere to tune and to leave our packs…”
“I have been to Žažar itself,” said Zevy, “to learn from žažarka masters.” He grinned at me through chicken. I don’t know if a žažarka master has lived in Žažar for a hundred years, but it sounded mystical. “If, afterwards, we can get good night’s sleep, we can play like hurricane for you.”
By itself this might have been enough to secure a bed. But we suddenly had another entrant to our bid ‒ Mëfa. “Sir, I have danced in the finest courts of Eretald,” she said. We all stared at her, in her shabby traveler’s cloak. “I can show your people dances from the noblest ballrooms.” To prove her credentials, she produced a flourish of unmistakable grace.
It was unexpected ‒ but clearly she wouldn’t have said it if she couldn’t come up with the goods. We were smiling at each other, the three of us. It was shaping up into quite a team. I’ve not had
that feeling for a while.
“Well, then, please God, I would be most obliged if your troupe would stay with me, and entertain us!” said the priest. “The people here love to dance. We have some players among us too, but they can’t manage a proper žažarka… We only get those when guests pass through. We’ll do something sacred first, of course…”
I was a little dumbfounded by the whole exchange. I knew even less about Eleďát yesterday than I do today, but I still don’t think it can be normal for one of their priests to encourage a bout of wild dancing like a Syetnor cultist. Still, in context, I could understand his approach. He wanted his faith to be popular, and popular, here in this nowhere-place, it was.
We arranged for an hour’s grace to fill our bellies, while the word got round that there was going to be music and dancing. The three of us were passed from blanket to blanket to meet and eat. These were kind and generous people, if a little bland; they reminded me of Como. I asked after him by name once or twice, but received blank stares.
The atmosphere got jollier as the sun went down, the first stars appeared and the light from the cooking fires drew strength from the dusk. Zevy and Mëfa and I were shown to a surprisingly genteel lobby in the house in which we unpacked and tuned, Mëfa revealing a pair of castanets she kept in her cloak, and discussed the modes and metres we would play, the alternating equal and unequal patterns of the žažarkî we knew. There was a decent
kena on a shelf which I asked to borrow. Mëfa swapped her cloak for a colourful shawl fringed with clacking beads which she had in her pack, and Zevy produced a set of metal finger-picks for amplification. When we returned, a loud clanging silenced the green ‒ the priest beating on a pot with a ladle.
“Children of Eleď! The Lord and His Angels have blessed us with a bounty of fine entertainers! We will dance žažarkî until we can dance no more! But first, we will herald the glorious Ascension of Our Lord Eleď into the Heavens; the very Heavens whose winds the Angels brought to the sails of the blessed Elenicoi, and blew them to our shores!”
A rousing cheer went up, then the voices of old and young intertwined to intone “Žescó! Žescó!”. I shuddered with the unfamiliar zeal of it, the sheer charisma which carried this crowd deftly towards frenzy. The Temple is… not like this. Sacrifice to Enäron and Išira feels, by comparison, like a group trip to an accountant.
The priest calmed the chant down with the ladle. “I call upon the
lebomî and
anorî to bring down the Celestial Light.”
I will fail to describe what followed; it was choreographed to pass through the onlooker like an intoxicating mist. The youngest and the oldest rose and swooped around the fires, filling their hands with flame ‒ a dozen lamps suddenly lit, swirling through the growing darkness. I suppose they merely walked, but the effect was of a serene, supple dance ‒ a dance with light, rather than with sound. But music, too, began: a drone on
en and
fi, put out first by the swirling figures, and then by the assembled crowd; and then, across it all cut the priest’s clear voice, singing in the chief mode of the Svetla, which ran majestic behind the whole scene, a hymn of not inconsiderable beauty in praise of this Celestial Light. The dancers held their lamps to the sun and the stars, then brought them back down towards the people, then up again at the sky; and truly, it seemed as if the heavenly orbs were being brought down to live in our circle of light for a spellbound time.
The priest sang “Žescó, žescó!” and the people followed, weaving three textures into a loose fabric: the chant with the drone with the pulsating exclamation. To my surprise a horn, played ‒ aptly ‒ by a girl of about 14, joined the exclamation, roaring from
ře up to
a, again and again. Then it was over ‒ silence fell, it had become night ‒ and the lamps were at rest on a dais in the centre of the green, surrounding a brazier I had not noticed before, which now seemed to burn with a special brightness. I felt shivers travel up my arms and neck.
I do not know quite how the moment transitioned from profundity into revelry but it did. Zevy and I produced the instruments, and Mëfa threw the shawl over her shoulders and struck a dramatic pose. We must have played a dozen žažarkî before the mood gave out and people started leaking away to bed. I switched between dičura, kena and singing, and Zevy played the čište like he was an entire orchestra. Mëfa moved like a demon and stole every young man’s heart… (Well, nearly.) The intricate percussion of her castanets and beads was augmented by some of the town players, those who could really grasp the rhythms ‒ they played on wooden blocks and pans and spoons. The townspeople lapped up her instruction and busted out a few impressive-looking new moves. The girl with the horn turned out to be truly talented and we improvised together over a few pieces, passing gestures between the high- and low-pitched voices of our respective instruments, inverse to the lays of our natural voices.
And right at the end of it all, before slumping into my feather bed, I heard, from the mouths of two stablehands practically as they rode off, the words that have haunted me all the long day today ‒ the reason I could take no rest even in the glorious comfort of our hard-won lodgings:
“…press-ganged in Ulian…” “… gave them a hell of a fight…”, “… bound for Karímia…”, “… with this wonderful hair, and this… terrible scar…”
Notes:
aďetonáe - Eleďe church
Niëma Nezi - Island Park, the large central park in Žésifo
Brac Eleďei - Ascension (lit. ‘Glory of Eleď’). The actual holiday is tomorrow, on the holy day ceďnare. In fact I got my days mixed up ‒ originally this episode was going to be set on ceďnare. My save was to imagine that people celebrating festivals might sometimes have a vigil after the market day ends on the néronden evening before. This is, in fact, how many Christian festivals are celebrated around the world (including Ascension, which in the Orthodox tradition has a vigil celebration). I guess the ceďnare Brac Eleďei celebration might be more solemn and take place in church; doing these informal kind of vigils for some Eleďe festivals might helpfully distinguish Eleďe from the pagans (who feast on ceďnare), building identity and community. Zomp says he likes the idea of vigils so I’ve kept this as is.
řemát lë - ‘your holiness’
a masseur, more like - Vd.
procesen ‘to massage’ is Basfahe slang for ‘flatter, con’. The priest is sending up both Kaidan’s implausible attempt to appear working class and his effort to pretend to be an Eleďe in the hope of getting a meal.
Heavens - in my first draft I suggested the idea of ‘The Heavens Between’ as a possible bit of Eleďe doctrine. It had struck me that part of Eleďe thought would deal with the cosmological situation that produced it, and that heaven might be seen as somewhere linking, probably from above, Oikumene and Almea. Brac Eleďei being Ascension (when Christ is said to have risen from Earth), which closely precedes Donulî/Pentecost (when the holy spirit is said to have been sent down to Earth), I wouldn’t be too surprised if some Eleďe doctrine develops somewhere that suggests that the Itian Nëron / holy spirit or Eleď himself in some way made a special appearance on Almea in between… However, I prefer Zompist’s observation that these Eleďe probably don’t even realise Oikumene is a different world: to them, the Elenicoi might as well have come from far across the sea. Hence the priest mentions their arrival but doesn’t go into detail about the Miracle of the Translation… I guess 700 years on from the event, it’s only really of special interest to wizards, theologians, and physicists! Mark’s main comment here was that he isn’t sure Eleďát is that interesting. We agreed though that Kaidan is coming from an unusually heavily entrenched orthodox pagan perspective, and also that strange things happen in backwaters, so all this is probably doctrinally unusual, and Kaidan thinks all Eleďát is noteworthy by virtue of being foreign to him anyway.
Řavcaëna - pagan goddess of agriculture. In modern times she has been somewhat reconsidered as a goddess of marriage and children (roles traditionally taken by Išira). Řavcaëna is Kaidan’s privately chosen personal god. That his entire family have worked at the Temple of Enäron and Išira for generations is inconsequential; that is work, this is devotion. Kaidan began following Řavcaëna’s cult shortly after his mother died; he found comfort in her image and in the marking of the rhythmic agricultural processes that mirror the inevitable passage of time, the yearly recession of winter and the constant cycling back of all collapsed systems into new growth.
kena - a flute (made from a reed)
žescó - equivalent to ‘Amen’
žažarkî - a žažarka is a fast, rhythmic dance, originating in Žažar [incidentally, Zomp ‒ any idea where this is?]. Usually performed entirely instrumentally by a small ensemble, they inevitably have an ABA structure, with a strong rhythmic contrast between the two sections (though this might be slow-fast-slow or fast-slow-fast). There was a massive craze for them in the 3300s, beginning earlier in the courts of the Eleďe dynasty, but eventually spreading to all parts of society. In later times they are mainly associated culturally with two things: a flavour of the South (of Eretald), and the era of the Abolineron dynastic struggle. A third, more covert, influence is Xurnese dance music: after Verduria’s Queen Elena visited Xurno and the Xazengri trade was renewed, things Xurnese became all the rage; a Xurnese aesthetic worked its way into the genre, though most people dancing it wouldn’t have realised. The Abolineron connection is chiefly due to a particular subset ‒ žažarka řohuepë, ‘unequal žažarka’ ‒ which people said resembled the unsettled times. What makes one of these ‘unequal’ is one or both of two features: (a) at least one of the sections using a metre that doesn’t divide neatly, such as having 5 beats in a bar ‒ or 8, but grouped e.g. 3, 3, 2 rather than 4, 4; (b) a particular tempo relationship between the two sections, whereby the time taken for 2 beats in the slower section becomes the time taken for 3 in the faster section. In practice what that means for the public is somewhat lilting, even jolting dance moves, and a big ‘jolt’ in the middle of the piece where the dance moves have to change significantly, and back. These jolts (both small and large) were thought to be exhilarating and emotionally charged, and overall provided a stark contrast to the steadier dances of the prior age.
Two žažarkî řohuepî have appeared already ‒ one in Zomp’s Patreon video, and one on Youtube
here.
You can hear a third
here. All three are scored for the same forces, a small courtly instrumental ensemble complete with unpitched and pitched percussion sections, the latter of which was imported with the Xurnese aesthetic.
Enjoy!
