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K Parker: Pattern

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K Parker Pattern

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Grandfather stopped, either for effect or because the gradient was a bit too much for his bad knee. 'This mountain,' he announced, 'is called Polden's Forge.'

'Oh,' Ciartan said. 'Why's it called that?'

Grandfather shook his head. 'It's a long story,' he said. 'I don't suppose you want to hear it.'

'Yes, I do,' Ciartan replied eagerly. 'Please.'

'Well.' Grandfather dug the point of his short spear into a soft crack between two lumps of rock and leaned hard on the butt end. 'Many years ago, our people didn't live here. In fact, nobody even knew this country was here. We all lived far away across the sea, in what they used to call the Empire.'

'I know all about that,' Ciartan interrupted. 'That's where the men go raiding every year, to bring back the metal and stuff.'

Grandfather nodded. 'That's right,' he said. 'Now, the Empire's a very big place-bigger than our island, which is East Island, and almost as big as East Island and West Island put together. That's how big it is.'

Ciartan closed his eyes for a moment, visualising the enormous extent of the Empire. That was an impossible task, so instead he thought of the biggest thing he could think of, which at that moment happened to be the long barn. 'All right,' he said, 'go on.'

'Go on, what?'

'Please.'

'In the south of the Empire,' Grandfather said, wiping condensation out of his moustache with his left hand, 'is a country called Morevish, which is where our people used to live. That was over two hundred years ago, by the way; for what it's worth, Morevish isn't even part of the Empire now, it broke away a long time ago.'

Ciartan frowned. 'Broke away?'

'Rebelled. The people decided they didn't want to belong to the Empire any more, so they chased out the Empire's soldiers and became a free nation.'

'Oh, I see,' Ciartan replied, dismissing the image that had formed in his mind of a huge crack appearing in the ground, and the whole country slowly breaking away and drifting off into the sea.

'At the time our people still lived there, though,' Grandfather went on, 'Morevish was still a province of the Empire, and the Imperial governors-that's the men who ran the country-were very harsh and cruel to our people. Every year they sent soldiers to steal a third of our corn, lambs and calves, and anybody who wouldn't give them what they wanted was dragged away and had his hands cut off, or even his head.'

Ciartan shuddered at the horror of such an idea. 'That's awful,' he said. 'So why didn't our people chase out the soldiers then, instead of later?'

Grandfather shrugged. 'Back then, the Empire was still strong,' he said. 'Later on, they got weak, because they were always quarrelling among themselves, and when that happened the people of Morevish were able to get rid of them. But we're getting ahead of the story.'

'Sorry,' Ciartan said. 'Please go on.'

A single solitary buzzard was wheeling in the air below them. It felt strange to be higher up than a bird.

'At the time I'm talking about,' Grandfather said carefully, 'two hundred years ago or more, our people still believed in gods. We don't do that any more, of course, just as you stopped believing in trolls and goblins when you were six. It's part of growing up.'

Ciartan nodded; though, to tell the truth, he still hadn't made up his mind about trolls. On the one hand, it didn't make sense to have people who turned to stone if they went out in the sun. On the other hand, he was almost sure he'd seen one once in the distance, on a bright moonlit night, when he and Grandfather had been out with the long-net.

'They used to believe in lots of gods,' Grandfather was saying, 'but their favourite god, the one they believed in the most, was a god called Polden. Now, the way with gods is that each of them's supposed to be in charge of something-like Grandma's in charge of the jam cupboard and the linen chest, or I'm in charge of the smithy. Polden was in charge of lots of things all at the same time, which was why our people believed in him so much. Polden was in charge of everything that had to do with fire; from keeping the house warm and cooking the dinner to making nails and horseshoes in the forge, right across to the fire that burns down houses when people fight each other. That made him different from the other gods; because, you see, all the other gods were either good or bad, depending on whether they were in charge of a good thing, like farming or making something, or a bad thing, like fighting. But Polden was both good and bad, all at the same time-because, you see, fire can be useful or it can be dangerous, and even when it's useful it's still dangerous, because if you're not careful when you're cooking the dinner you can set light to the chimney and set the thatch on fire, and the house'll burn down.'

Ciartan nodded sagely; he could understand that. In fact, this Polden sounded rather like himself, because he always tried to be good but somehow he kept managing to do bad things, or so the grown-ups told him.

'Anyway,' Grandfather went on, as the buzzard dwindled out of sight in the distance, 'lots of people from other parts of the Empire got to hear about Polden and started believing in him too; and this annoyed the men who ruled the Empire, because they believed in a whole different lot of gods; and that just made them treat our people even more cruelly than they'd done before. In the end,' Grandfather said, his eyes still fixed on the distant prospect of the farm, 'our people tried to fight the Empire's soldiers, but they lost; and the Emperor-'

'Who's the Emperor?'

'The man who ran the Empire. He told his soldiers to round up all our people who'd tried to fight the soldiers, and their families too, and put them on two hundred ships and launch them out into the sea.'

Ciartan gasped. It seemed a very harsh and unjust thing to do.

'It'd have been bad enough,' Grandfather went on, 'if they'd known these islands were here. But they didn't. For all they knew, there wasn't anything across the western sea but miles and miles of empty water, and our people would either have died of thirst or drowned. But they didn't. Just when they were at the very end of their food and drinking-water, they woke up one morning and saw the very top of a mountain-not this one, it was one of the Broken River mountains on West Island-and they knew they were saved.'

Ciartan had closed his eyes, as if to spare himself the horror of the exiles' plight. He opened them, and sighed with relief. 'What a terrible thing,' he said.

Grandfather smiled. 'Not so terrible, as it turned out,' he said. 'Because this country is far, far better than Morevish, which is very hot and dry, and very little grows there; and besides, back then it was part of the Empire, while out here our people could be free.'

'Ah.' That made sense, too; though Ciartan couldn't help feeling it had been pure luck, and the fact that it was so nice here didn't make what the Emperor had done any less wicked. 'So,' he said, 'why's this mountain called Polden's Forge?'

'I was coming to that,' Grandfather said. 'You see, when our people first came here and saw the clouds of steam and found that the water in the springs was boiling hot, they imagined that their god Polden must have his forge right underneath this mountain; and that's where the name comes from.'

'Oh,' Ciartan said, enlightened. 'I see.'

'Some people even said, 'Grandfather went on, 'that when they first got here, they could see smoke and flames roaring up out of the top of the mountain, and the glowing coals of the forge fire. Mind you, nobody's ever seen that since, so they were probably making it up.'

A thought occurred to Ciartan, lodging in his mind like a fish-bone stuck in his throat. 'But Grandfather,' he said, 'if Polden was a god in Morvitch-'

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