The Sunward Sporestalks, an ethnography
Every practitioner, every scholar of the arts should be aware of the power of the seasons. Wintersweet, bottled at the solstice: auguries and misty steps. Spring and The Mender's gifts: blessed founts chilled by molten ice; verdant herbs, fresh or dried.
Earth and sky in confluence. Fool's moon in autumn. Leashstar and Voidmoon above all. The oldest tabulations of the later predate the Republic's founding, and the finest lenses are ground to track the former. The Sporestalks need neither. And if their date for High Summer were to differ from ours I would assume an impurity of glass or a mistake in writing.
Their sect hails from the boreal wilds. The woods surrounding the Gash's source are said to house their sanctum, but I have not seen that fabled grove. Communities all along the river do welcome them, as healers and as priests. (For the role of Druidic sects in folk religion, see
al-Thowou's Mellorsinic Cults and the spirit world
.)
Verruca, my primary informant, had roamed all the way down to Auster. Like the seasons, they move with the stars. As moons and planets follow their orbits, they bring these seers with them – though not usually all the way down to the river's
sugach
.
Lacking as the Sporestalks are in a formal conception of the unmooring, their practices nonetheless should be considered as the missing link between the wild sorceries of the primitives and the advanced arts. In the view I am hoping to advance, they are not merely vessels for quasi-divine powers, like for example the shamans of the steppe orcish and boreal human tribes, but instead utilize a unique approach to high magic through celestial ritual.
It is in the celebrations surrounding High Summer we find an explanation of both components necessary for the arts. First, it should be noted that the importance of the day of High Summer itself tends to be overstated in most accounts. While the confluent zeniths of Leashstar and Voidmoon produce the aforementioned spike in arcane potential, this peak extends for multiple days before and after the actual astronomical event. Furthermore, the folk religious demands surrounding the day often make complicated preparations and techniques impossible to perform during the date itself.
Secondly, a reliance on the absolute maximum implies an amount of intent the sect actively shuns. They envision themselves not primarily as wilful actors on the natural order, but rather as the agents of its will. This is in part a clear act of self-deception; their subdivine spirits may express feelings, or even something approaching appetites, but the world itself is, of course, fundamentally empty, a vessel to be acted on by gods and ensouled mortals.
My third point is then their paradoxical self-creation. They may deny their own will, but they do manifest it. Change is a tool for the trained practitioner. We are and are not what we will, and the self, the knowledge of the self, are the necessary origin and the absolute limit of the art. Sporestalks, on the other hand, are who they believe to be.
Neither dragon, nor fey, but the bestial is their source. And as such they are changed. Not human, not dragon, not demon, not fey – not even orc – but beast. Whether or not our conceptions of bloodline and lineage even hold for them is a question unsettled by the literature, and my own observations do not suggest an easy answer, one way or the other.
Most are eager to follow. Blood may or may not command them, but they obey. In the weeks before High Summer they venture deep into the wild and – and by decree of the administration the details will be omitted.
Others, more similar to us than some might wish to admit, seek mastery. "Has it worked for you," I asked my informant, "ever?"
She lodged in the hospitality room of The Ferryman, where I had taken the roofside suite. From courtesies shared at breakfast, over common choices in entertainment, to entertaining conversation, we had grown closer over two weeks. The beliefs and practices of her sect proved an intriguing filed of study, and she was willing – eager even – to share her insights. We had even begun to share our food during the meals, with her feeding me meat dishes and her deserts, asking only bread in return.
"Not yet," Verruca said. (I never asked a clan name.) "Last year, I experimented with blightroot. That made it worse. Cold sweats, racing heart, and I got so fucking wet. As a swamp.
It was like a downpour after summer heat, like the raging sea. And I fled. Then came the loss of control: growth of fur and claws, a tail even. And you know the properties of untreated orcish healroot. I don't remember everything, but..."
Following the publishing guides of the Library Commission and the Student's Bureau's decision concerning teaching material, I will continue to withhold the salacious details.
Suffice it to say, her story made its impression on me. Scandalized but laughing and – I am not ashamed to admit – somewhat aroused, I offered well-considered praise:
"A stunning tale – I'd have given up after that." And after a pause: "What are you doing for this year?" High Summer was a week away, and I sensed that I had stumbled onto a veritable experiment.
"On the season before that I had some initial success with fasting and meditation," she said. "I still ended up fucking my way through Ingveer, of course. It started out innocent enough: I'd meet a likely lad, and we'd spent the night together. Might not've been the season at all. Soon, however, any offered drink or a single sweet laugh were enough to get me into bed. Or into an alley. Or on my knees right by the counter. One wouldn't be enough, and I'd have two or three each night. Then two or three at once. During days as well. I missed the festival and spent the day on my back instead.
I am no longer welcome there. Even in my haze, I saw the bloodied knife. He had murdered one rival already, and seeing me like that – it broke him. There was a howl; inhuman and wild – I think I enjoyed it. Then he attacked. Ten against one, but his weapon did cruel work. They beat him to death.
I am a skilled healer – usually. However, I hadn't brought any herbs, and I could not rightly see. One was fucking me all the while – I think. The blade had missed his heart by inches. It was lodged under a rib, and they had gotten him before he could pull it out again. I staunched the bleeding – somehow. It got removed later and the bone did heal, maybe.
There is always a price. Even for us; especially for us. Power taken from nature, from herbs. Or from the song of the spheres, this close to High Summer. Even from blood, from life's flow. I do not remember what I did. I probably came on some mule driver's cock and smeared his injury with our discharge. It might've been the spirits. Fur started to grow, and his eyes turned bestial. Or maybe 'twas wood. Bark scabbing over the bleed and knobby branches sprouting along the rib. The others preferred to bind their own wounds and to go see an alchemist.
One was found poisoned the next day. They hanged his betrothed, but hurled stones at me as they chased me away."
"Dragon's Mercy!"
"Yeah. Live and grow. Live and grow."
"And now?"
She laughed. The shadow of her palm fell over our empty plates and the pitcher of water we shared. "I keep clean. And I have studied, and I have travelled; all the way to the Shears – if you can believe it. Mother, Father and Child keep jealous guard over the ports on the big islands, over Schwarzscharf and Helgeland. On the small isles, however, on the lonely rocks where five families and a hundred sheep share an orchard, the Moonshadows still hold sway."
"They are another sect?" I produced notebook and coal pen from my robe.
"Yes. They are watchers of tide, and they follow the call of the sea. Shoals of ice float past the islands in winter, but they cloak themselves in seal skin. They taught me much, and I collected salt grass and sinner's sponge. The lynchweed grows better here, and I got it while in bloom. The mash doesn't taste half bad, mixed with milk. I meditate, in the morning and at night, and the spirits whisper in my sleep."
"You meditate?" I asked and made another note.
She gave me a knowing smile. "Not like you people. We don't do weird breathing and nonsense syllables. I find a quiet spot instead. Somewhere surrounded by bushes and roots. And then I'll fill my cunt with my a wooden fuck-stick."
"Gramercy," said I.
Distant thunder roared. The air brimmed with aetherized energy. Lightning flashed and rain fell in heavy drops on the window sill. She stretched. Wiry muscles rippled under her tight shirt and her small breasts pushed against the buckskin. "Speaking of," she said, "I should get going."
"Do you need help?"
