The Ends of the Infinite

Rota

Standing on the balcony, Stareshan looked out over the mud streets of Holm-ir. Through the decidedly bleak weather, horses and oxen drew laden wagons. He could hear the commotion on the wharves where traders delivered processed goods and picked up the industry of the forest – pelts, beeswax and honey, lumber, berries, fish, meat, and tubers. From this vantage point on one of the ancient hills, he could see the rivers, slate-grey stripes across a green land.

In his old age, Stareshan understood that he would not remain Great Earl for long. Already, his joints ached and his eyesight and hearing had begun to fail. His appetite waned and his sleep worsened. Yet, he found a serenity in success. His sons sat as Earls at invitations in their own right. His eldest, Pereshan, sat in Polustogr, sandwiched there between his cousins, Mladekan, invitee of Ozerstogr, and Seldukan, invitee of Gornahar. Seldukan sat likewise sandwiched between cousins, Pereshan above him and Votorshan below him in Gradabah.

Even young Posleshan had achieved invitation, seated in Beney Arabah. The pressure of holding off the invading archer-hordes took its toll on his health, sleep, and sanity. That Beney Arabah more resembled an overgrown outpost-camp than an ancient and honorable city merely fueled Posleshan's jealousy of his older relatives.

Stareshan's younger brothers knew that he would not last long. He had known the feeling, back at Bosk-ir, when Ateykan had weakened. Teretwan certainly felt that now, an indescribable envy, sitting in Bosk-ir and waiting. Chetveran appeared more satisfied with Yar-ir, but would not complain if his invitation moved up the ladder to Bosk-ir, with the corresponding increase in wealth and power. What an odd situation, this order, that drew men to desire their brothers' deaths.

Odder still seemed the fact, which he saw quite clearly, that his sons too hoped for his proximate demise. Posleshan dreamed every night of leaving Beney Arabah and returning to the protective embrace of the mountains. Stareshan knew this, and had no solution but to expeditiously die. Pereshan and Votorshan, though satisfied, probably shared the sentiments of their younger uncle.

Stareshan pondered. Was it worth it? When, after giving birth to Pereshan and Votorshan, and to their sisters, Hamra and Yaresa, Domata had refused to give birth to any more children for the strain it put on her. A month later, he neglected to direct his guard to accompany her, as was the custom, on her next trip to visit her family in Gradabah. Still fresh off a recent argument, she ignored normal precautions and left despite the lack of a guard. She never made it to Gradabah. A pack of trolls found her in the forest. Expeditions after the fact found only parts.

It broke his heart – but not more than it had broken even before the killing. It had been what needed to be done. The realm demanded more children, sons and daughters, for the protection of its rich trade and its expansion into the boundless taiga. He needed more children, to measure up to the expectations of his family; his father had had four sons and five daughters.

For years after Domata's death, cold and absence dominated the other side of the bed. Stareshan woke up alone, he ate alone, he read alone, he bathed alone. The company of his men on a hike or a hunt could not match the warmth that had been. Surrounded forever and only by subordinates, if he spoke to any person in a day, it rarely ever extended beyond his transmission of commands and orders.

Every so often, a servant girl might join him for a night or two, but the Earl, the protector of Beney Harim or Sevurak or Ir-karbat or wherever else, could not be seen dishonoring every young woman in his city. And he had eventually lost interest in the matter anyway. None of those girls had possessed the maturity and humor that had attracted him to Domata. None of them had the same twinkle of mischief in their eyes as Domata had when she told him a racy anecdote. Moving up to Gradabah, his duty of pushing back the steppe archers to Beney Arabah began to occupy him. So had familial matters.

The children learned of their mother's death soon enough. Pereshan refused to speak to him, despite being nearby in Beney Arabah. They communicated by messenger only, and then only about oncoming hordes. Votorshan kept his distance up in Sinovya-Sever, keeping the tundra and hill trolls at bay and periodically calming the nerves of the local tribes. Hamra and Yaresa had gone to Votorshan, to geographically separate themselves from their odious father, and been married off to various chieftains of the north to stabilize Votorshan's alliances.

In Gradabah, Stareshan found and married a local woman, Casra, mostly out of a sense of duty. He wanted to try again. First came their daughter, Tertya. Then, after his invitation to Gornahar, their son, Posleshan. But soon thereafter, Casra became increasingly involved in the city's politics. Immense pressure from the town's elders and vecha convinced him to act, and Casra found herself sent to a convent outside Beney Harim. Sister Sonsla, as she became known, died several years later of a chill she acquired in the cold stone of the convent.

There was once again the permanent cold and isolation in his chambers. He didn't miss Casra's qualities – in comparison to Domata, she had largely lacked those – but he did miss a warm confidant. He missed Domata. When they had first become betrothed, he envisioned that the warm fuzziness would last forever. That he would wake up every day staring into those familiar brown eyes, and find them lovingly staring back. That the only way this security, in knowing there is another thinking for you as for themself, would end would be when he peacefully drifted off into the afterworld in her arms. These honey-golden fantasies and memories, arguably one and the same, once kept him warm, but now they haunted him.

In his insatiable lust to fulfill what he believed the expectations of him, he had killed the woman he claimed to love. He wanted to believe that she had died quickly, perhaps by a troll's club to the head or cutlass to the neck. But he knew that this was unwarranted optimism. The distribution of her remains, scattered irregularly over several dozen acres, consumed in equal parts by trolls, maggots, and frost, suggested the other option. She was likely kept in a troll pantry in a cave, each of her appendages torn off in turn over a span of weeks. Troll superstitions teach that leaving the food source alive preserves freshness. She would have remained in this half-living state for weeks, gradually rotting, gradually starving, absent an arm or a leg, fearing the pain of another tear but hoping for it nonetheless to finally give her the tranquil of death.

He had done that to her. No matter. Stareshan stared at the sky, grey with low clouds as always. He had done what his father would have done in the same situation, what his forefathers would have commanded. The rota demanded young men of the family to protect the spreading cities of the land, and young women to strengthen alliances with the neighbors. He had served his family and his goals. He now stood, the Great Earl of Holm-ir, father of three Earls, surveying the ancient city of his ancestors. Victory may not be warm, but it is sweet.

Reviewer's note: Despite the ahistoricity of some elements of Nudnov's account, likely to emphasize the relationship between Domata and Stareshan, much of it bears striking resemblance to the truth established by the chronicles, some preserved writings, and archaeology. The chronicles commissioned by Stareshan's sons indicate no great love of their father, and minimize his role in the defense of the steppe. The chronicles of the court of Posleshan are especially interesting, as they begin to develop a more negative picture of Stareshan beginning around the time archaeologists believe Posleshan was invited to Beney Arabah.

However, the portion portraying Stareshan's marriage to Casra appears to have purposely been written inaccurately. The pair very much had a loving relationship, with Stareshan gifting Casra a ring he had painstakingly carved and cast by his own hands upon their betrothal. And, unlike what the account would have a reader believe, Casra was also very much a woman with character; the chronicles from Stareshan's court emphasize her liveliness and optimism. The consensus among historians argues that, following her repeated political interventions, the elders and the vecha of Gradabah unilaterally decided to exile Casra to a convent; Stareshan was distracted at the time of the exile by matters of defense, and, upon learning of the situation, convinced by the elders, possibly by threat of revolt, not to rescue her from this exile.

Although it might have distracted from the rest of the story, it may have been an interesting facet for the author to consider: already wracked with the guilt of arranging his first wife's death, Stareshan allowed his second wife, much beloved by him, to rot away, alone in a cold, distant nunnery. Responsible for the deaths of two women he loved dearly, in the remaining year and a half of his life after Casra's death, as what sort of a monster did he perceive himself?