The First Life of Tanan (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE

It was evening in the village of Port Billen.  All the fishermen had come in and were either having dinner with their families or trading stories at the Rusty Hook Tavern across the village square from the docks.  Constable Jelak was relaxing on his usual bench, looking at the stars over the water, when he saw Anin rowing in.  He  walked down onto the dock to meet his friend.

“Surprised to see you back so soon, Anin” said the constable as he took a rope from Anin, and tied the boat to the dock.  He caught sight of the infant laying in the net box.  “Is that a baby?”

Anin told Jelak what had happened on the beach while he unloaded the boat.  Jelak held the baby for Anin and listened.  When the tale had been told Jelak looked at Anin seriously and said, “The King’s law forbids Lataki on Komisan.”

“I didn’t see that I had any other choice, Jelak.  I couldn’t leave a baby to die alone on the beach.”  Anin had been worried about Jelak.  The old constable was the King’s representative in Port Billen and it was his duty to uphold the King’s laws.  But Jelak was more loyal to the people of Port Billen than he was to King Dannap.  After more than fifty years of serving as Constable of the village, he was more a member of the community than a representative of the King.

“You did the right thing,” said Jelak, much to Anin’s relief.

Jelak carried the baby as the two men walked up the hill toward Anin’s house.  “What’s the child’s name?” asked Jelak.

“I was thinking about calling him Tanan.”

“That’s a good name,” replied the Constable.  He stopped, and looked at Anin.  “People are going to ask questions about this baby.  What are you going to tell them?”

“Well,” said Anin. “I was thinking I might go talk with Soama about this.  If Soama asked me to care for an orphan from another village I couldn’t very well say no, could I?.  And nobody around here would question the word of an Abbot, especially Soama.”

They walked on up the hill to Anin’s home, which was brightly lit and smelled of good food.  Anin, who had never married,  lived with his father, Lindelin, who was the doctor of Port Billen and a widower.

Jelak handed the baby to Anin.  “I look forward to officially meeting Tanan after you speak with Soama tomorrow.”  The old Constable gave Anin a nod, turned and walked up the street.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lindelin had been the doctor in Port Billen for nearly as long as Jelak had been its Constable.  He was skilled in his trade, respected by patients, and he lived a good and comfortable life.  His father had been the doctor in Port Billen before him and the two had practiced together for nearly twenty years before his father died.

His son’s abilities were more suited to the creation of medicines than they were to diagnosing and treating illnesses.  Anin was a gifted apothecary, but also a passable healer and Lindelin was proud of him.

Anin was fifty-three and had never married.  He was a kind man, well liked and prosperous.  But, much to the disappointment of the single women of Port Billen,  he had always been more interested in collecting ingredients and creating his medicines than in romance or marriage.

Things had changed for Anin in the ten years since Tanan had come into his life.  His obsession with work was still his defining trait, but he was no longer just Anin the Apothecary, he was Tanan’s father.  He loved being a father and Lindelin loved being a grandfather.

When Tanan suddenly appeared in Port Billen, few people believed Anin’s story that Soama had asked him to adopt the child.  Soama confirmed the story on several occasions, but it just didn’t make sense to most people that a newborn child would be carried from a village on the other side of the island to a home in Port Billen.  But everyone in the village liked Anin, and if Abbot Soama was sticking to the story, he must have his reasons.  There was gossip for a while, but the people of Port Billen soon accepted Tanan as one of their own.  Eleven years later, Tanan was as much a part of the village as anyone.

Tanan loved Port Billen.  He loved the people and he loved living in the little stone house with his father and grandfather.  Every morning and evening the three would gather around their big kitchen table for meals.  Tanan listened to the discussions between the older men and asked questions about the parts of the conversation that he didn’t understand.  Lindelin and Anin encouraged the boy’s interest in their work and patiently answered all of his questions.

Tanan had a true love of learning, but not a great enthusiasm for school.  When he was eight, he simply stopped going to school on a regular basis.  His teachers were annoyed at this but Tanan explained quite matter-of-factly to Lindelin and Anin that he was learning more by spending his time with the people of the village than from schoolbooks which, by the way, he had already read.

Another reason Tanan didn’t enjoy school was a boy named Grapf.  Grapf was two years older than Tanan and had been described by more than one person in the village as ‘dumber than a wormy stump’.  Grapf was determined to make up for his lack of intelligence by beating up anyone he could catch that was smaller or smarter than him.  He made it a point to punish Tanan for the crime of being ‘a smarty pig’s ass’ whenever he had the opportunity.

After a couple of months of trying in vain to persuade, bribe and order Tanan to go to school, Lindelin took Tanan to visit Headmaster Tews at the school.  After a great deal of discussion, the three of them came up with a unique solution.  Tanan was free to attend school on his own schedule as long as he showed up for tests, passed them with one hundred percent accuracy, and wrote essays about the things he learned while he wasn’t at school.  From that point on, Tanan went to school only on Fridays to take tests, hand over essays and borrow books from the school library.

•        •        •

Tanan’s eagerness to learn and his willingness to work made him welcome everywhere in the village.  He would sometimes spend time with his father learning about the medicinal properties of different plants.  He often spent time in the kitchen of the Rusty Hook learning all the various ways to clean and fry fish, which was a staple food in Port Billen.

He usually spent one day each week working on Pessup’s fishing boat learning to catch fish, tie knots, clean the boat and anything else Pessup could think of to keep the boy busy.  Pessup treated Tanan like a little brother and taught him the fine arts of cussing, practical joking and friendly hazing.

Tanan would often spend an afternoon with Constable Jelak, who in addition to being the King’s representative in the village, was also his grandfather’s best friend.  Port Billen was so quiet that there wasn’t much for a Constable to do, and Jelak had long ago taken up the hobby of butterfly collecting.  Over his sixty or so years at Port Billen he had built up quite a collection and he enjoyed Tanan’s interest in it.  Tanan and Jelak would have lunch together and then spend a few hours hunting and preserving butterflies from the woods and beaches around the village.  Tanan was building a nice collection of his own, and Jelak adored the boy.

His favorite place in the village, however, was at the Port Billen Abbey spending time with Abbot Sweelin.  Sweelin had been a resident of Port Billen since a couple of years after Tanan’s arrival.  He took over the Abbey when Soama transferred to a secluded mountain Abbey a day’s walk from Port Billen.

Sweelin was tall and physically imposing, but soft-spoken and polite.  Unlike Soama, who was an outgoing and involved member of the community, Sweelin was more introverted and content to spend his days in the Abbey library.  Not only was Sweelin a voracious reader, but he spent hours each day sitting at his desk in the library making copies of books.  Tanan spent countless days in the library of the Port Billen Abbey with Sweelin, reading anything Sweelin would give him access to.  Sweelin enjoyed having Tanan around not only because the boy loved books, but because Tanan had a knack for bringing Sweelin a hot cup of tea just when he needed it.

•        •        •

One evening after dinner, Lindelin asked Tanan to join him in the small garden behind their house.  Tanan followed his grandfather outside and sat cross legged on the ground.

“Tell me what you know about magic,” said Lindelin.

Tanan thought about the question before answering.  “I know that it comes from the songs that people sing in their heads, and there are different kinds of magic, and most people can’t do it.”

“Very good,” said Lindelin.  “The ability to perform magic requires a disciplined mind.  To be able to focus one’s attention in the way required to do magic is an uncommon ability.  I think that you might have the kind of mental focus that it takes to perform magic.  Would you like to try?”

To do magic like his father and grandfather was something Tanan was very interested in.  But Tanan knew he was too young.  Few people pursued magical training, and then only after they finished with regular school.  Tanan was too young to think about magic.

Lindelin was amused with the look on Tanan’s face.  “You’re thinking that you’re too young to work magic, aren’t you?  That could be true, but I think we should find out for certain.  Would you like to try?”

Tanan was very much willing.

“This is the most simple magic,” said Lindelin, “and almost anyone who can do magic can do it.  Sit quietly and try to calm your mind.  Think about the sensation of cold.  Imagine a ball of coldness in your stomach.  For some people it helps to imagine a ball of white light in your stomach.  When you think you have it, try to imagine that coldness traveling from your stomach to your right hand.”

Lindelin leaned forward in his chair and touched Tanan lightly on the cheek.  His hand was ice cold.  “When you can touch your right hand to your left and feel the coolness, we will talk about this again.”

“I bet I can learn this by tomorrow,” said Tanan.

Lindelin couldn’t help but smile.  “I admire your confidence, but there is no hurry.  Most students don’t learn this until they are much older, and it often takes them months.  Don’t be disappointed if you can’t learn this in a day.”

CHAPTER FIVE

When Tanan arrived on the island of Komisan, it had been settled for more than seven hundred years.  The ancestors of the Komisani had travelled for two years across deserts and mountains from a place called Sura, a semi-permanent settlement in the middle of the Surani Plains.  Sura was little more than a collection of sod huts, animal skin tents and other, even less permanent structures.  In the middle of the ramshackle collection was a marketplace where the various Surani tribes came to trade.

The relative permanence of Sura over a few generations gave some of the more regular residents the idea that they should try to cultivate crops, herd animals and store food for later use.  The more transient residents would often raid the village and take what they wanted.  The Surani were extremely tribal, aggressive people, and had been for thousands of years.

A particularly forward thinking man named Komisa, became tired of growing crops only to have them stolen and persuaded a group of about three hundred Surani that they should leave the village.  Komisa left Sura with a group of the best and brightest from Sura.  They traveled west to the edge of the Surani Plains and into the great desert that bordered it.  For a year, they travelled through the desert.  It was a brutal crossing, and they lost nearly a third of their number.

When they emerged from the desert, they came upon a large lake.  A portion of the group, led by a man named Latak, were disheartened by the losses and decided to settle at the lake.  They set up their camp with the intention of establishing a village, modeled after the one Komisa envisioned, where they could live in peace.  Within ten years, however, the Lataki abandoned their fledgling city and returned to the nomadic lifestyle of their ancestors.  As their numbers grew, they split into multiple tribes which spread across the vast new plain.

Komisa and his group continued to travel west in search of the right place to settle and build their new village.  Komisa believed that they would need to establish their colony far beyond the village of Latak and his people.  They travelled for months across an expansive grassland.  They crossed a range of mountains and arrived on the shores of a sea, where they established their first village, Masura, or ‘New Sura’.

For the first year they lived near the shore of the sea, fishing and cultivating crops.  Komisa sent scouting parties a hundred miles in every direction to learn about the new land and insure that there were no other people in the vicinity.  They were alone.

They built crude boats and began to explore the sea.  The explorers returned with news of a large, lush island in the middle of the sea.  Komisa traveled to this island to see it for himself.  The island was almost one hundred miles from east to west and sixty miles across from north to south.  The eastern side of the island was mountainous and heavily forested, while the western side was almost entirely rolling hills of fertile land.

The people abandoned Masura and moved to the island they were calling Komisan, and named their new city Panna, or “City of Peace”.

Komisa, who had led his people to this beautiful new land, was proclaimed King by his followers.  Under the leadership of Komisa and his heirs, the Komisani thrived.  They cultivated the land and focused their efforts toward improving their lives.  Over time the Komisani developed a written language, learned to refine and combine metals, and made advances in medicine, architecture, art, literature and philosophy.  Within three hundred years, all the cities and villages of Komisan had paved roads, running water and sewer systems.  Herd animals were brought from the mainland, and the entire western side of Komisan became a patchwork of pastures, fields and orchards.

The population grew from the one hundred and forty-seven who arrived with Komisa to a hundred-thousand.  The population leveled off at that number by royal decree several hundred years after the founding of Komisan.  Life on Komisan was peaceful and prosperous.

•        •        •

Very early on, when the Komisani government was formed, a constabulary called The King’s Legion was created.  The Legion was charged with keeping the peace across Komisan.  As the population grew, a Royal Palace was built in Panna and an elite branch of the Legion was established to act as a ceremonial guard.

When a hunting party returned from the mainland and reported that they had been attacked by a tribe of Lataki plainsmen, the reigning King sent a platoon from this royal guard to investigate.  The Komisani had not forgotten that their ancestors came to their island to escape the warlike plainsmen, and the King gave the Legion the authority to kill any Lataki that came too close to Komisan.  The King believed that if the Lataki plainsmen learned of the prosperity of Komisan, they would raid the island and that prosperity would end.  The King expanded the Legion further, removing the title of King’s Legion from the constabulary, and reserving it for the military force that guarded the palace and patrolled the mainland.  From that point forward, the primary mission of the King’s Legion was to prevent the Lataki from learning about Komisan.

•        •        •

As the population of Komisan grew and spread across the island, the Abbots were there to guide them.  The Brotherhood of Abbots existed for thousands of years before Komisa led his people to the island, and they spanned the inhabited world.  The Abbots lived mostly in secluded mountain Abbeys where they catalogued the knowledge of man.  They were also subtly influencing emerging societies toward the path of peace and enlightenment.

When Komisa left Sura, he had no idea there were twelve Abbots traveling with him.  As the Komisani society began to mature, Abbots introduced written language.

Abbots were also the Masters of magic.  They were alert to identify children who showed talent in the magical arts.  They trained some, like Tanan’s grandfather, in the healing arts.  Others they recruited into the Brotherhood.

The Abbots placed an Abbey in every town and village on Komisan. They set up schools in each town, trained the first healers, performed marriages, and maintained libraries. In villages too small to have a government presence, they often acted as arbiter when there was a dispute.

•        •        •

The year before Tanan came to Komisan, there was a census.  Because Port Billen was too small to have a permanent government presence, Soama took the census in Port Billen.  By the time the next census was taken, Sweelin had replaced Soama as the Abbot at Port Billen.  Sweelin, who did not care to trade in the gossip of the village, had no idea that Tanan had been born a Lataki.  When he completed the census report, Tanan was listed as a new addition to the family.  The official story was that Tanan had been adopted from a single mother in the town of Istra, and so that’s what Sweelin wrote down on the report.

When the census reports were sent to Panna, the government representative who reviewed the Port Billen census was a man named Essek, who happened to have been promoted to his position after spending thirty years as one of only two government officials in Istra.  Essek had no recollection of an Istran child being taken to Port Billen.  Unlike Sweelin, Essek was very much involved in the gossip of his town and he was certain he would have remembered a baby being born to a single mother and then being taken to a village on the other side of the island.  And why, Essek wondered, would the child be taken in by a single man?  It didn’t make sense to him, and Essek wasn’t one to let something like this slip past without reporting it, which he immediately did.

Census irregularities were few, and Tanan’s case was investigated along with a handful of others.  Most  of the investigations turned out to be simple clerical errors.  In Tanan’s case, no record could be found of the single mother in Istra.  Over the course of six months, the case was elevated through the bureaucracy and eventually found its way to Nim, the King’s aide.  Nim, in turn, passed the report on to King Dannap.