Black Water, White Dragon (part 1)

The Water, chapter 1, part 3

The arguments continued through the day, until mother ordered them to start the evening meal. Ansil and Nerath set the table, while Etin went down to the food loft for flour and parsnips. She couldn't see the Tsik anymore, but what she had thought was smoke, looked like fog descending from the distant peaks.

Inside again, mother had started the cooking. Grandma stretched her fingers towards the heat of the fireplace. "I'll take mine by the warmth today," she said.

"You always do," said Nerath.

"How are your hands today," asked Ansil.

Grandma was happy for the opportunity to complain about stiff knees, hurting joints, bad weather and chilled fingers, and entertained the little ones while mother stirred the pot.

"Etin," said mother, "could you get another couple of buckets of water, for the dishes afterwards."

Etin obediently picked up the buckets and the yoke. She stomped up past the sheep barn and put down the buckets by the little stream that provided Apple Hill with fresh, clear water. It sprang from high up where the snow melted above the cliffs, where it was white all year round, and jumped from rock to rock, and gurgled from pond to pond between heather and moss, down the long slopes to Plainsdale, where it finally became one with the long and broad Plainsriver.

Etin let her gaze run along Plainsdale. First south, where heather and birch had become pasture sprinkled with juniper and other shrubs. She followed the Plainsriver with her eyes until it disappeared between hills and mist, long before it watered the broad fields in sunny and strange Ainrand and burst forth into the bay between the Twin Cities.

Then she turned northwards, beyond the cliff, above the ice-sheared mountainsides, and to the top of the valley between Plainsridge and Bluemountain Ridge. Where the two ridges gathered, together with the ends of the Gray Mountains and Isenridge, the Vengvet Heights and the Tamospar-ridge, stood Mount Zanubegil, the "Hand of God". At the dawn of time, it was said, Saylars - god of smiths, maker of the dwarves, He who Shapes - stretched out his hand and drew Earth from Sea. Where he held became the highest point the Five People knew of. Zanubegil, home and capital of the dwarves, which although it had gates and roads in most of the nearby valleys, had its main entrance towards Plainsdale and the 'river.

Occasionally Etin saw small figures up by the gate, but outside marketdays, the dwarves usually kept to themselves.

Her eyes travelled south again, towards the other farmsteads along the west side of the Bluemountain Ridge - Swiftstream, Brookstone and a handful of others. On the other side of the valley the Plainsridge lay like a straight row of hilltops for many, many miles, and west of that, said some there were swamps, and others said there was a desert and others said there was the ocean and the Westhavens.

Etin was happy that wasn't here. She stepped out on the flat rock a distant ancestor had laid out in the pond and carefully lowered the first bucket into the water.

The ground shook gently. Low and murmuring like the sound of a distant animal herd. Rings spread in the pond, tiny waves broke on the banks, and a small, round pebble dislodged from its place among many. Etin pulled up the bucket and placed it beside herself. A rock as large as her fist rolled down and bumped softly against the bucket. She looked up towards Mount Zanubegil, the Hand of God.

Normally it was covered in snow and the gate closed. Now it was licked by small tongues of flame like a crown, and black smoke poured out of the open main gate.