The Rossem Project

Departure - Part 1

     "That was a nice speech," Lirenna said half an hour later.

      They were circulating through the crowd, sharing pleasantries with the people they knew only slightly. The friends of friends of the people Dallon had really wanted to be there. They'd met most of them at least once or twice before, of course, and knew them well enough to pass a few words with them when they passed them in the street, but this was an opportunity to get to know them properly and make real friends of them.

     "Was it?" replied Thomas, still feeling a little numb and unable to really believe that it was all over. "What did I say?"

     Lirenna laughed, the beautiful laugh that he loved so much, reminding him of the tinkling of little bells. "Come on, I can see the Martaynes over there. Let's go say hello."

     She grabbed him by the arm and steered him over to the dumpy, red cheeked couple, standing all alone beside a table laden with fruit and sweetmeats. Like Thomas, they weren't great talkers, but they were great eaters and were among the class of people who judged the success of a party not by the people they met but by the volume and quality of the food that was on offer. To judge from the expressions on their faces, Dallon had excelled himself this time. Approval was radiating from them in waves as they worked their way slowly but methodically through the contents of the cheese table.

     "Great party," said Gregory Martayne around a mouthful of blue piela in response to Thomas’s polite enquiry. "Haven't had such a good time since Basalto's cousin's Ras-Holl."

     He pointed a pudgy finger at one of the older trogs who was now talking with Dallon in low and serious tones. The Ras-Holl was a party thrown by the family of a young trog when the last strand of hair left his face without the aid of a pair of tweezers. It was an extremely important occasion, full of meaning and symbolism, second in importance only to the Ras-Spar itself, which typically took place a few years later.

     "You attended a Ras-Holl?" cried Lirenna in astonishment. "But I never heard of a human being invited to a Ras-Holl! The trogs are so private about their rites and practices! How in the name of the Gods did you manage that?"

     "Basalto and I go back a long way," said Gregory with a grin of pleasure and pride. "I saved his life once, did you know? It happened about thirty years ago, deep down one of the iron mines of the southern Redburgs..."

     Neither Thomas nor Lirenna had heard the story before, but before the fat farmer had said more than a hundred words they recognised the pattern of it and could anticipate how it would end. Gregory's greater height had been vital in the rescue operation, tying ropes and fixing beams in a region where the tunnel ceiling was too high for the powerfully built but short trogs to reach, and in gratitude for his help, during which his life had been in very real danger, he and his family had been named Rham Amakhi, or honorary trogs. A very rare honour.

     It made the wizards see him in a completely new light, and they felt a little ashamed of themselves for their previous judgement of the fat couple. The trogs would never have bestowed an honour like that on him unless he was a man of genuine courage, particularly considering their customary opinion of farmers. Among the trogs, mining and jewelry making were the highest and most respectable careers to which a man could aspire, and all other professions in their society were followed by those who'd failed to make it in those two professions. Farming was near the very bottom of the list of careers that a trog would follow of his own free will, and those who had to labour on the surface, under the open sky, growing food for the inhabitants of the vast tunnel cities, were almost the unmentionables of trog society. That was why the trogs imported most of their food, trading for it with refined metals, weapons and jewelry, and it said a great deal for Gregory Martayne's standing in the valley's trog community that a farmer had been honoured in this way.