I have this tale from Marthon the Limber, who passed this way many years ago, before the grale lost their sense of direction. It is said that the tale is far older, before Vencet's time, but the plucking of taut hairs which was intended to accompany the recitation suggests the true age lies somewhere in between. For my own part, I do not believe the tale accurate by more than a fifth, as time embellishes all lies and most truths. Still, there is the matter of the blue tree...but let me begin.

of the past, which is prologue

In the mezh between summer and autumn on the coast of the great southern land of Angeina, the eightieth mezh of Queen Tilly the Uncoiled, a great indigo cloud swirled and billowed over the clear azure waters, cumulous and laden with sulfur, until at last it came to hover over Croinighmuire, the Great Tree of Mhuire, spreading its branches these hundred years in supplication to the celestial powers. Such event had always signaled the festive prelude to the Centennial of Parturition in Teiramuire, the village of Mhuire, but, as so often happens whenever too much depends on tradition and its concommittant stagnation, the signs and portents were misinterpreted, on this occasion in three ways of fatal significance.

First, the Bolt of Ronegh, the inhabitant of the great indigo cloud and the recipient of all acts of obeisance rendered by the village of Mhuire, including the sacrifice of half of the newly-hatched kits each Parturition, failed to fell Croinighmuire, which successful act in past centuries had begun the festivities. Despite the massive blue charge hurled against it, the tree remained standing, smoking but defiant and unbowed. It was reckoned--this from the records of the Vizors, whose function it was to interpret those signs and portents--that Ronegh had lost his maka, and that his bolt was no longer of sufficient potency to penetrate to the nether reaches of the taproot of Croinighmuire, and fell her [all trees during the reign of the Uncoiled were regarded as female, see Appendix Famech, History of Mhuire, Hall of Records].

Second, the schools of grale, whose sense of direction was imprecise under optimal navigational conditions, lost cohesion due to misinterpretation of the waypoints of a coastline that should have been altered, and spawned, not in the torpid Liffea, which flowed by Teiramuire and several other smaller settlements on the way to a breach in the low coastal bluffs, from which it cascaded in shallow cataracts into the sea, but in the swift Siannen, a hundred and forty thousand spandeks to the sunrise. This misadventure deprived Teiramuire of its annual supply of skerpot, the dried fish on which the entire community fed, and vast buckets of entrails which fertilized the root crops of the mhuireens, as the capallcagi who inhabited the village were called. Threatened with starvation, and fearing that the festivities would engender a fresh population of hungry kits before the stores were re-established, the mhuireens sacrified their remaining century-old kits to Ronegh, in honor and with the hope of re-empowering his bolt and thereby enabling him to alter the coastline and, it was hoped, correct at least temporarily the navigational deficiencies of the grale. As a result of these desperate measures, the village population consisted solely of adult mhuireens, and was dependent upon the reproductive largess of the catalyst.

[By tradition the village madomo was the measure of the spandek, taken to mean that distance from a point between the convex eyes, along the dorsal tubercles, to the base of the tail. As the madomos of this time varied in length, the spandek as referred to here is interpreted as the mean distance].

As to the third...

Three days past the mezh a precessional entourage consisting of one prophetess, one buffer, two dowries, and two portiers arrived in Teiramuire to proclaim the imminent arrival of the catalyst. By this time, of course, blind panic had set in and, as is common to any fauna whose survival is threatened, fear impelled the irrational response of the mhuireens to this visitation. The prophetess, who by tradition was the deovated twin of the catalyst and her protector on these annual parturitive forays [NB--in a social process unique to Angeina, each of the hundred villages receives the catalyst once every hundred years, and the village's kits are ritualized into the adult state following the centennial catalysis] entreated with the leading mhuireens and the madomo, to no avail. The entourage was badly outnumbered. The dowries were confiscated and parceled out--even their magnificent ultramarine tails were julienned and dried and hawked for souvenirs--and the portiers were shorn of goods and foodstuffs [including the four sacks of eyelashes from the previous sacrifice of kits, said to be of aphrodisiac properties], and the buffer was deprived of the soft yet rugged pinnate scales, scarlet this time of the season, with which she polished the dorsal tubercles of the catalyst, an essential act to establish the catalytic rank, unpolished maroon tubercles being a sign of a lesser enabling ability. Following deprivation, the entourage was slain, and most of their fragments cast into the ocean...

Into Teiramuire some time later chuffed a catalyst with a knobbly row of maroon tubercles down her spine, her somewhat sidewinding gait exaggerated by the gravid mauve tail which trailed behind her, raising tiny dust demons in the dry path that divided the village in twain. She was taller than the average capallcag, which is to say that she had to dip her head slightly when entering the local establishments. She was a lovely specimen, even among catalysts, for the mhuireen--indeed, the inhabitants of any of the southern lands--are not given to reckless and wanton reproductive festivities, but must be guided and encouraged and even, in rare case, shown how to comport themselves. Thus, a certain amount of natural allure is requisite in the profession.

Her name was Rhiane. She abounded with natural allure.

It struck her as strange that no mhuireen cast wanton eyes upon her. As she passed along the path, windows in the rows of whitestone thatch cottages were clapped shut, audibly--her spatulate head twitched from side to side, distracted by the sharp sounds--and doors were closed to her. Surely the prophetess had foretold her coming, the gifts had been given, the eyelashes apportioned out to spur the ejection of fluids, if need be.

And where were the kits? Their century of waiting had passed, their status altered with the Parturition ceremonies.

Rhiane sensed fear.

It reached her like sound, vibrating off the tiny oval empanic membranes just below each convex aqua eye. Had her visitation passed in proper manner, those same membranes would have thrummed in crimson. Now they were a pale pink, the emotional content imparted to her brain incomplete and inappropriate. Reproduction was not meant to be a fearful process.

And where was her entourage? Already burdened with the solitude inevitable whenever the entourage preceded her, she now began to bend under the weight of it. It was not good for a capallcag to be alone. The imagination runs wild when you are alone, dreaming terrible things. The magic weakens, the will fades. Absent the power to call to Ronegh...but she could not countenance that.

Rhiane tossed a look down her back, the wide flat mouth nibbling at some scales that had loosened near the dorsal row--green, these, slightly darker than the rest of her body, for they were dying. The tubercles were maroon. She could do nothing about that without the buffer. Without her friend Margan, who would clear away the old crust for the new, the raw and gorgeous sapphire, the proper color for her senior ranking.

Margan?

What has become of you, my old friend?

At last she reached the far limits of the village, where stood a vast, squat building of the same style as the cottages. Its hinged doors fluttered slightly, as if jostled by breeze. From within came sounds, words, laughter. Not the laughter associated with mirth. Rhiane's empanic membranes tingled again, cerise now. The laughter associated with tension, with the dreaded anticipation of discovery.

Rhiane's hearts sank. What have you done?

She pushed her way through the doors.

Most of the adult mhuireens--males, of course--had gathered within, seeking refuge in the pasty reseda beverage called edou, ducking their mouths into individual terracotta serving bowls, wiping the myrtle green froth on their arms and on each other. As one they turned to her. They might have taken her then, and perhaps saved themselves. She had not mustered the courage to act, regarding each benevolently, her eyes still aqua, anxious but curious. She was vulnerable, and they might have relieved her gravid tail, spent themselves, albeit to scant pleasure, for without her guidance the act itself was brief and perfunctory. Rhiane scanned them one by one, searching for the prophetess, the gray and green old one who was her First Mate. And searching for her entourage.

At last it happened, as these things do, and a mhuireen wobbly with edou ducked his mouth not into a serving bowl, but onto the counter, which in turn spilled the contents of an open jar of clear glass. It toppled, and hardened objects bounced along the rough hardwood floor like pebbles, and came to rest between the three-toed feet of the catalyst.

She stooped, and picked one up.

White it was, mostly, on one side. On the other, the color had faded during the drying process, but had clearly once been ruby, the ruby of a star on a cold clear night, when nothing was around you but the stars and the breeze and the sounds of the sea and the arms of your best friend and your lover. Rhiane's thoughts joined, merged, separated again, and bled into one another.

Oh, Margan...

With forced dignity she picked up the other three eyes and tucked them under a scaled pouch at her left hip.

In the tavern some trembled. Others wept. For what they had done. For what was about to happen.

Rhiane, uncertain and perhaps timid until now, took courage from outrage. There is always one thing to stand for, and she had found hers at last. She foresaw a terrible revenge. She drew herself up to her full height, her crest rubbing the ceiling thatch, and she spoke, the calm in her voice a counterpoint to her fury, to her pain.

"You are perfidious. Fearing for yourselves, you care only about yourselves.

"If you kill us," said one, "you will die, too!"

"Will I? If a stone falls into a pond, and there is no one to hear, is there sound?"

They regarded her with blank eyes, eyes devoid of expression even more so than those in her scaled pouch.

"Is there hope," she asked, "if there is no one left to hope?

But, like those of the prophetess, her words conveyed no meaning that they could grasp. Their fear would protect them...for a while longer.

"Do you understand?" cried Rhiane. "No, I see that you do not."

To the Great Tree she dashed, the mhuireen followed, drunken and trembling.

She grasped a branch of Croinighmuire and tore it free, casting it aside. Another, and another, until, with a mighty effort, she sundered the Great Tree. Inside it was a charred ruin, lifeless and insubstantial.

At this discovery they cried out in alarm.

"And so it is with you," cried Rhiane. "Rigid in your fealty and obeisance, you have nothing left inside you to give to one another. You can have no friends like mine. You have become, then, what you worship. You are an empty god."

And they wept, and gnashed their teeth.

The magic was upon her at last. She raised her hands to the huge indigo cloud. "Ronegh! Come see your people, Ronegh. Come see what you have done, and what you will become."

She spanked her gravid tail against the hard earth, once, twice, thrice. It came free. She nearly pitched forward then, unbalanced, and might have surrendered, grasping the ruined Croinighmuire for support, admitting a lack of conviction. With a mighty effort she drew herself erect, a pillar of terrible, lonely rage.

Clear blue crystal balls spilled from the tail. Ten, thirty, fifty...ninety three. One for each mhuireen in the village. One kit for each. They rolled across the gramina like great dried eyes, and stopped rolling.

Rhiane raised her arms to the cloud.

"Ronegh! I reject your commands!"

Blue lightning sizzled, enveloping her in aura.

"Ronegh! I abdicate my powers!"

And more lightning, like a blue fist, smashed at her. And still she stood, a great hulk now, defiant and unbowed. Like Croinighmuire had been...but she retained a core of strength--the love for her friends, now dead.

"Ronegh! Your people will starve, and they will die!"

And the sky turned blue, the cloud turned blue, the Great Tree was engulfed, and Rhiane, and dazzles of blue light hissed from her upraised arms to each of the brilliant dead eyes scattered on the gramina.

The sky was black, broken by blue.

"Ronegh!" she shrieked. "I bring you death!"

The earth shook, and split, and into a great abyss spilled the fragments of the tree, and the balls, exploding as they fell, and the incandescent remains of the catalyst.

You have fallen silent now, wondering. Should you be kind to strangers? Will your gods lead you into false ways? And if they do, how might you know which of the ways to choose? If you will fear what you have done, ought you then not do it? I cannot tell you. I am only the storyteller, passing to you what I have heard, before I pass on. If there is no one left to hope, is there hope?

The answer lies in your own hearts. I myself cannot say. But this I know: It is said that even unto this day a small tree grows on the coastline, straight and lovely, bearing fruit the year round, and covered with tiny sapphire tubercles. The origins are obscure, as there is no one left alive in the area to speak of them.