David Dunham Page
| Glorantha Page
| Umathela
The guardian set up a great brazier, and asked for a vision of a hardworking wife in its smoke. He saw a beautiful young girl with hair like gold, eyes like sapphires, and grace like quicksilver. He saw her working hard at the forge, able to reach into even the hottest fire and make things of beauty from metal. “There she is,” he thought, and sent messengers to find her.
She was Sasralla, the daughter of Lebchi the smith, and at last she was persuaded to marry the guardian of the south. Lebchi was sad to see her go, but happy that she would learn many things that would help her people. As she left he told her “I have great hopes for you, just as I sometimes think that your half-brother [2], clever though he is, is too lazy to amount to anything.”
Sasralla traveled with a great escort, like a queen. But once she was in the Southlands, she was little more than a slave. The guardian made her work day and night. He watched her every moment, and when they were apart he took the brazier so he could see her in the smoke. She could not escape, because the black lands beyond were filled with terrors that she could not defeat alone.
At last she found a young white bird that had choked on the smoke of the fires and was near death. Sasralla secretly nursed it back to health, and taught it to repeat her words. When it was recovered and fully grown, she sent it to her family with a message, telling them to seek her when the Old Sky Witch [3] rose by the Starry Hand. The bird arrived at Lebchi’s forge stained black by the fumes of the fires and with its voice little more than a croak, but it repeated Sasralla’s message.
Lebchi was angry and wanted to go get his daughter himself, but Bersochek spoke up. “Let me go, father, and show you what I can do.” So Bersochek set off to the Land of Fire. Right away he had trouble, for the way was blocked by icy hills, which nearly froze him where he stood. He left the hills exhausted, his spear broken, and almost ready to give up right there.
However, his mother the Tree Lady had heard of his quest and sent three leaves. With this help he came through the Land of Snakes, a jungle full of cannibal monsters, and entered a wide, bare plain. There on the plain he was nearly swallowed by a Grass Hurricane. Later a sky hunter seized him, but he proved too hot to handle.
While crossing the plain Bersochek also met a group of wanderers. He was excited to find them, but they were suspicious. They challenged him to beat one of them in a contest, any contest he chose. So Bersochek took a small piece of bronze and said, “Heat a fire, and we will see who can pound this the flattest. I bet you I can pound it so flat, it will have only one side left!” So they did as he said, and their champion pounded the piece thin as a piece of bark from a yearling birch. Then Bersochek heated the fire and pounded the piece into a strip as thin as the sap on the inside of the bark, and rejoined the ends of the strip with a twist. He ran his fingers over the strip to show them that now it had only one side. They laughed at this, and invited him to stay.
Bersochek spent a long time with them, helping them make things and enjoying their hospitality. He was tempted to stay there, but at last remembered his sister and told them he must leave. He left able to run lightly with the wind as they did, so that only the fastest creature could keep pace.
In time he came to a blackened land, full of ash and smoke. Terrifying Chaos creatures roamed the land, and Bersochek barely escaped them. Even when he had reached the fiery borderlands of the gods, where Chaos could not follow, he was almost without hope. Even if he found his sister, how could the two of them ever cross that black land?
Nevertheless, he began to search for her, and met many strange creatures in the borderlands. He was happiest when one day he found children. The children liked him, shivering to his frightening stories of dark forests haunted by deadly tree people. It was the children who first showed Bersochek the hidden paths in fires, and how to enter them without being burned. That gave Bersochek an idea for how he could save his sister.
It took much practice and many false starts, but at last he learned to run from one fire to the next along secret paths, driven by hot winds. With this knowledge he began to roam the borderlands, asking everyone he met how to find the Starry Hand.
At last someone told him how to find it. After much preparation, he went to the place and saw the Old Sky Witch rise from the Underworld to the Sky. There he found Sasralla, for she had never lost hope. She warned him that her husband was nearby, and might look into his brazier at any moment. But Bersochek said, “He will see something interesting.” They exchanged clothes, then he carried her through a nearby fire, and quickly returned and took her place.
Soon enough, the guardian sought a vision of his bride in the brazier. The first time, he saw her hammering bronze in a fire. The second time, he saw her shaping a spear point at the anvil. And the third time, he saw the spear point on the end of a shaft, coming at him through the smoke of the brazier. For Bersochek had crept up to where the guardian was lounging, and stabbed him as he stared into the smoke.
The guardian roared as the spear point struck home in his eye and tried to grab Bersochek, but Bersochek was too quick for him. He dove into the fire and caught up with his sister. He led her through another fire, but the guardian knew secret ways through the borderlands, and was catching up. Sasralla said, “Brother, I am afraid. It is too slow going through the fire like this. I think I see a better way.” Bersochek remembered the long, arduous journey, and agreed to try his sister’s technique. They leaped into the fire together, and emerged at their father’s forge.
After that, Lebchi sent many expensive presents to the guardian, including a wonderful eye of bronze that could show him any woman in the world, other than Sasralla. So at last the guardian gave up pursuing Lebchi’s offspring, but he never forgave them.
[1] Presumably the promalti.[2] Bersochek. Sasralla’s mother is an earth goddess; Bersochek’s mother is the Tree Lady.
[3] The Three Sky Witches rose during the Storm Age. Old Sky Witch is a white planet which now travels the Sunpath in 31 days, disappears for a equal length of time, then appears again in the east.