The Song of the Shroud

Ostiarium Forests - Logger camp - Night time

Tarmen - Held the vial up under the moonlight and looked at the substance's golden and pinkish colour. For five gold coins it had better be stronger than all the drugs he had ever tried and sweeter than all the peaches he had eaten, put together in his life, he thought. Moving a little away from the main camp, he found a spot and leaned against a sturdy tree, sitting with his back against its trunk.

He pulled the cork and twisted it. The cap slid, pulled loose from its black seal. Crumbled wax fell away. A pungent, cloying smell arose. He knew that smell... honey... and something else... Something that reminded him of home. He took the vial to his lips and drank its viscous contents. Almost immediately a balm spread down his throat into his gut and suddenly he could see nothing, feeling as if the world around him was shaking, spinning. His heart pounding. He tried to get up but found he could not longer control his limbs. Tarmen Frespit was falling. He could still hear the laughing of men nearby for a few heartbeats but moments later, he lost all senses...

Elsewhere

Even before he opened his eyes he knew where he was. What he was chanting. The Shroud Song. He knew he was back. Back to that terribly glorious night that a pup turns into a wolf. His tribes' rite of passage, a ritual that had, for girl and boy alike, included the grave, the hollowed out hole wrapped in a cloth with nothing else but a pipe feeding them air, and a day and night long burial, under the soft wet earth of the jungles.

Buried alive, for the child to die and the adult to be born. A test against the pitfalls of madness, the spirits that lived in each person, coiled at the base of the skull, wrapped tight about the spine. Spirits that were ever eager to awaken, to crawl a path into the brain, whispering and laughing or screaming. The spirits of fear.

There was no place for fear for a Ruin Diver. One could not swim into vast underwater caves and hollows with one lungful of air not knowing where it would lead them or if one was ever going to take another breath. Fear had no place among those that plundered and explored the ancient buried ruins of Kr'ull, squeezing into the nooks and crannies that normal folk would fear to tread, with miles and miles of compressed earth above you, with only darkness and your own heart beat as a companion.

Tarmen Frespit had survived that night. He had defeated Fear. And that was all he needed, for this. All he needed. The Song of the Shroud. Later he would see others succumb to Fear. And die. For an adult to break under fear — there could be no worse nightmare for it tore away all hope, all faith.

He couldn't open his eyes. The weight of the earth on his covered face did not allow him He was back again. Wrapped in the ceremonial cloth. At the threshold of Zin's world. With a wooden tube pressed to his dry cracked lips, suckling the sweet nectar from above. Nursing at the teat of the ethereal father. He called upon no gods. There was no shame in that. All he had was Zin's Song. The Song of the Shroud.

And when he was finally pulled out of the hole, just when he thought he could fight no longer, after one day and one night, The Fear had retreated. But this time, for those that were not broken by the ordeal, instead of the arms of the elders pulling them up, greeting them like men and women and no longer children, Tarmen came face to face with a large animal. Tusks as large as daggers, dug him out of the ground. Pulled him free from Zin's realm, back to the jungles of his homeland. A large primal eye fixed his gaze on him, as he emerged from the earth. The grey haired beast snorted, and ran into the undergrowth with a grunt, not in fear, but as if calling the reborn young man to join him. And ran after it, Tarmen Frespit did.

Deep in the sleep of Felfar, Erewhon's Tears, Tarmen received no visitors apart from Slivikhi, the Boar of Winter...