Though it was early, already many people were huddled around their makeshift hearths in the fields, busy with breakfast. There was a joyful tenseness in the air; Vasyllia had not yet tired of waiting for the success of the hunt. Already a bustling marketplace stood ramshackle around the storytelling stage.

The married women in headscarves with temple rings, the young women with their hair unbound or in the tell-tale single braid—they all regarded Voran and the Pilgrim with smiles that rarely lit their eyes. The men, in tall beaver hats and wide, sweeping coat-sleeves, barely looked at them before passing on to the more important business of the day.

Pipers and fiddlers danced and spun about among the people, sometimes narrowly missing colliding with them, to general comic effect.

Again, that nagging sense that something was missing bothered Voran. It was as though Vasyllia were a woman far past her prime, who still painted her face in the fashion of newly-married youth.

The Pilgrim showed little interest in the usual wares—ceramics, fabrics, trinkets fashioned from wood, some of which sang on their own, some of which moved about in choreographed figures. The chalices of gold did not hold his attention; the woven tapestries may as well have been rags. He walked past the most ornate stalls with hardly a glance, though many of the merchants’ wives, impressed with his mien, tried their loudest to attract his attention.

Like hens flapping their wings to attract a cockerel, Voran thought.

The only stall that seemed to interest the Pilgrim was that of an old potter. It was hardly a stall at all, rather a tattered canvas hung over a frame of grey wood. It stood at the farthest edge of the market, surrounded by refuse. The potter, who smelled as bad as his teeth looked, could not even speak from surprise when the Pilgrim approached him.

All of his wares were plain, unglazed, though Voran sensed that they were made with great skill. The Pilgrim seemed to think so as well. He pointed at an urn of perfect proportion, smooth and undecorated. A hand-written rag sported the price: two copper bits. Voran winced at the price. This potter must have no business at all, if he was willing to sell his handiwork for so little.

“May I buy this?”

The potter stuttered something unrecognizable.

“I’m sorry, my brother,” said the Pilgrim. “I did not hear you.”

The potter’s eyes changed. Their dull yellow cleared to white, and something in them sparked. To Voran’s surprise, the potter seemed to shed his years before their eyes. He wasn’t old at all. He was hardly more than forty.

“From a traveler, I ask nothing but blessing,” he said. “Take it with my thanks.”

Voran was taken aback. The man spoke in a beautiful accent, similar to how the old priests spoke. It was a pleasure merely to listen.

“May you be blessed, my brother,” said the Pilgrim.

The potter continued to watch after them as they walked back to the center of the market. Shame nagged at Voran, though he couldn’t exactly explain why.

The Pilgrim returned to the center of the marketplace, where the tallest hats and the shiniest temple-rings congregated. Approaching a ceramics merchant, he pointed to an urn twice the size of the potter’s, glazed and hand-painted with fanciful images of animals and plants interweaving so tightly it made the head spin.

“Ah, you have quite the eye, good sir,” simpered the merchant, his five jowls quivering with subservience. “Best Nebesti make, that is.”

The Pilgrim raised the decorated urn in his right hand, the potter’s simple clay in his left. The crowd stilled. Just before it happened, Voran saw it in his mind’s eye, and he had to stop himself from laughing.

“Sudar,” said the merchant, using the honorific of respect for a person of indeterminate social class, “may I ask what you intend…”

All the ladies gasped in unison as the Pilgrim dropped both urns to the ground. The Nebesti urn shattered with a beautiful noise. Next to it, the potter’s vessel lay as though no one had even touched it.

“And so falls Nebesta,” whispered the Pilgrim. His eyes bored into Voran. “But will Vasyllia prove to be as strong as the potter’s urn before the coming darkness?”

Voran’s stomach churned at the Pilgrim’s words, but the Pilgrim merely turned and walked out of the market, accompanied by shocked silence. Voran picked up the potter’s urn and turned to pay the merchant.

“Will a silver suffice for your trouble?” Voran asked, abashed.

The merchant glared at him. “Five silver ovals. Not a lead jot less.”

Voran chuckled at the merchant’s willingness to take advantage of the situation. But he still pulled out only two silvers. He handled them for a moment, looking over their rough edges. These coins were little more than slivers cut from a long bar of grey metal. How strange that they were more cherished in Vasyllia than the life-earned work of an artisan like the poor potter. Shaking his head at his own muddled thoughts, Voran dropped the silvers down in the bulbous palm of the merchant. He rewarded Voran with cursing eyes.

The Pilgrim was already halfway back to the city, his shoulders bent and his step labored. Voran had no trouble gaining on him this time.

“Sudar!” called a voice behind them. It was the potter. “Please,” he said, running up to them, “I know you must be a Pilgrim. Forgive me, but…would you honor my house…” He seemed to run out of words, though his hands continued to gesture expressively until he noticed and laughed at himself. Voran had never seen such unguarded simplicity in any man. Everyone he knew seemed to plan every gesture, every word spoken in public. This spontaneity was strangely refreshing.

“Yes, we will come with pleasure,” said the Pilgrim.

In the beginning was the Darkness. The Darkness covered the earth. Yet an ember of light there was in the high places. In Vasyllia, upon the mountain, the Harbinger found a people worthy of the Light. He blessed their leader, a man named Lassar, and he made a Covenant with them. As a sign of their calling, he summoned fire from the Heights upon an aspen sapling. As long as the fire burns, as long as the Covenant Tree remains young, Vasyllia remains blessed by the Heights, and the Darkness shall not touch it.

- From “Lassar the Blessed and the Harbinger”

(Old Tales: Book I)

Chapter 4

At the Potter’s

The potter’s house stood wedged between two taller buildings—a common mead-house and a smithy. It seemed built of shadows more than wood. But the open door revealed a different picture. A bright hearth illumined a much longer interior than Voran expected. At the far end, the house grew into a two-story loft swarming with small children. Their clamor was far more pleasantly inviting than the sour smell of the mead-house next door. The potter’s wife, dressed in simple but clean grey homespun, laughed with her eldest daughter as they cooked something tinged with thyme and mint in the cauldron over the hearth. The potter’s many wares adorned every nook and cranny in the long house. Some pots clearly contained stores, but many more overflowed with flowers. Colors in mad profusion burst from unexpected corners—fabrics, blossoms, the bright eyes of a ruddy child. Voran was breathless with unexpected pleasure at the harmonious madness of it all.

The Pilgrim seemed to grow taller and wider as he entered, and his eyes lit up with more than the light of the hearth. He sighed in relief.

“Come, come, my dears,” called the potter, clapping his hands as though herding a flock of turkeys. “It is as we hoped. A Pilgrim comes to our home! You will take part in the day’s celebration, yes, Pilgrim?”

The Pilgrim laughed—a full-throated guffaw that encircled everyone with affection. Even the hearth seemed to leap.

“What an unexpected joy!” he said. “And I thought no one in Vasyllia remembered this day.” Voran wondered what he meant.

The simmering household boiled over, and all the children exploded into movement that looked perfectly rehearsed. Two girls, their braids pinned to the top of their heads, carried an embroidered hand towel to the Pilgrim. A boy of about ten years floated over with a silver basin of water—where did a potter manage to find himself a silver basin? —and spilled only a few drops on his way to the Pilgrim. The Pilgrim washed his hands, then lowered his head. The boy’s eyes sparkled with delight. He had obviously been hoping for this moment. He threw the remainder of the basin over the Pilgrim’s head. The Pilgrim exploded into laughter, and the two girls with the hand towel could hardly keep their hands steady for their own giggling.

The eldest daughter brought a loaf the size of her head, still warm by the smell of it. The eldest son carried a frothing tankard of mead carved in the shape of a mallard. It was exquisite workmanship. The smallest boy—no more than two or three—stood by them with a ceramic cup full of salt. The Pilgrim tore off a piece, dipped it in the ale, then in the salt. He smelled it with his eyes closed, savoring. Then he threw it over everyone’s head directly into the hearth. Everyone cheered. Then he downed the tankard, leaving a sip for the boy who brought it. The boy looked like he had been given gold coins for his birthday.

Pleasant gooseflesh tingled Voran’s back and neck. He had never seen anything like these rituals. They were rustic, but clearly ancient. How pitiful his own words must have sounded to the Pilgrim when he welcomed him into Otchigen’s cold, empty feasting hall.

The potter walked around his children, tucking in a shirt-tail here, fixing a stray hair there. His wife gestured with eloquent hands to two more girls coming down from the loft so insistently that one of them fell before reaching the final rung. The entire family presented itself to the Pilgrim. But instead of bowing before him as Voran had expected, they exploded into a complicated line dance that weaved in and out of a circle of which the Pilgrim was the center. It felt spontaneous, and yet no one stepped on each other’s feet. Not even the smallest children. Above the noise of stomping feet, a song rose as if from the depths of the earth. Everyone sang it, even the Pilgrim.

“We greet you, distant traveler!

Rejoice, beloved brother!

You’ve come from behind the mountain,

You’ve risen to the high places.

Now bless our grass, our flowers blue,

Our bluebells with your words, your eyes.

Warm our hearts with gentle words,