ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-FIVE: Olorn-art’h

165
******

“Here comes another one!” Stuart called. “Or maybe it’s not just one. It could be two.”

Alden had his eyes closed, and he was trying not to feel like a sad, sad failure of an Avowed.

“You’ll get it this time!” Stuart said.

“I think it would help if you weren’t so encouraging. I’m worried I’m hurting your feelings every time I miss.”

There was a pause in the cheerleading. They had left the area around the house behind to have their “duel” farther out in the woods. Alden was grateful for the lack of spectators.

I didn’t expect to be great at this yet, but I did think I would be a little better than I was against Big Snake last week.

He blamed the situation. It just wasn’t as easy to find your skill-aligned flow state when you were on another world, surrounded by knights, playing a messy version of catch with a wizard who was a tad too worried that if you missed all of his throws you’d become depressed about your affixation.

Stuart wanted him to catch so badly. The last ball had been delivered directly into Alden’s hands, and when Alden had opened his eyes to give a questioning look, Stuart had sheepishly agreed that it shouldn’t count.

He was making the balls with a silent spell that Alden was very tempted to peek at. They were a collection of all the loose debris on the forest floor, compressed into a sphere that was solid enough to hold together until it impacted some part of Alden’s body and showered him in loser’s mulch.

He’d thought it might be motivating if there was some consequence for failure, and Stuart had suggested this.

Not too far away, Stuart was repositioning himself.

My left.

At least he always knew in which direction he could find his entruster. He rotated to face him.

“Are you thinking about catching or protecting?” Stuart asked.

“Both,” Alden said. “But mostly catching.”

He was also trying to remember that idea he’d felt like he might be standing at the edge of when Big Snake had been hurling tennis balls at him. There had been a focus on his entruster that was a little more distinct than usual. If he could figure that out…

“We don’t know how suited your skill actually is for catching,” Stuart said. “But we know it’s very good at protecting. Maybe you should think more about the fact that we are in battle and the helpless children I’m throwing to you will be injured if you allow them to fall.”

“We’re throwing imaginary children now? Why are we throwing them? And how did you come up with—”

He kind of thought he felt something coming toward him. Overhead. He jumped to catch it and took a pile of dead leaves to the face.

******

“You do remember us talking about how I would wear appropriate clothing and my commendation when you introduced me to your family, don’t you? And how I would do my best to make a respectful impression?”

It was half an hour later, and Alden was following Stuart through the forest to an outlying cottage, where he would finally be meeting one of Stuart’s non-Primary parents.

“I didn’t imagine that plan, did I?” He pulled a twig out of his hair and tossed it aside. Now, he was almost as dirty as he had been the first time he’d visited Rapport I.

“You’re the one who said you should have consequences. It will be good to visit Olorn in her work cottage. She’s the only one there right now. I checked.”

“I finally caught a couple of mulch balls! That should reduce consequences.”

“I also think introducing you to Olorn first is the best thing.”

Is he particularly close to her, then? Alden wondered.

“Yesterday, during our family…discussion,” Stuart said, “she told me that she wished I felt free to spend more of my days playing in the sun. We look like we’ve been playing in the sun, don’t we?”

Alden took in Stuart’s tidy brown braid and pristine tunic. He brushed some more leaf litter off of his own t-shirt. “If I’m being honest, I think we look more like you found me under a rock while you were digging for bugs to feed Other Alden.”

“Olorn’s a <<potter>>. She’s often just as dirty as you are. And she’ll appreciate that you were bettering yourself by practicing your skill!” There was a hint of enthusiasm in his voice at that last bit that made Alden wonder if he’d mixed extra dirt into the last few attacks on purpose.

So that I look even more hardworking when I’m shown to the chosen adult?

Maybe. Probably not. Anyway, he was in it now.

“A potter?” he asked.

“She makes jars, cups, plates—particular ones that are needed for some rituals. That’s only part of it. Working with the ground of the Mother is one of her areas of specialty.”

“Like the wizard version of Alis-art’h?” Alden asked, noticing a small root just in time to hop over it. He gave the tree it probably belonged to a wave.

Stuart looked over at him. “That’s not the most accurate comparison…. Olorn often uses spells to increase the quantity of a rare type of soil or stone. Then she might <<refine>> it or <<meld>> it with other things to create what she needs as a base for whatever final product she’s making.”

Alden added “Olorn—ritual pottery, multiplies precious materials” to his cheat sheet.

“She’s your Father’s spouse?” he asked. “I don’t have a perfect understanding of how everyone here is related.”

“We’re a large household,” Stuart acknowledged. “And ours isn’t a common way of doing things in most places in modern times. Father’s first marriage contract was with Olorn and Veln, who had been his votaries. The two of them were already committed to each other and planning for children when he finally mentioned that he’d been hoping they would have children with himwhen they decided to retire from following him to dangerous places. Aunt Alis says she had to talk him into telling them.”

For some reason, Alden was picturing Alis-art’h dragging the Primary out from behind a potted plant before presenting him to two wizards who’d worked with him for years. Jeneth was too shy to ask for your hands on his own, so I’m doing it for him. You’re all married now.

“Years later, he did the same thing again with another votary couple,” said Stuart. “And then the four spouses spent a while finding another pair that suited them and the rest of the household before telling Father he ought to <<court>> them.”

The cheat sheet is going to be fascinating reading material when I finally fill it out with everything.

“The written versions of everyone’s marriage contracts are preserved in the manuscript library if you’re interested,” said Stuart. “Aunt Alis, Uncle Tesen, and Father forming fruitful marriages with skilled people was always part of their goal for building a successful siblinghold. They knew they would often be away from home, and large families…”

Alden could barely keep up, and it wasn’t just because Stuart was talking quickly.

Jeneth-art’h had six spouses—two male and four female—who’d all been votaries to him or other knights prior to their marriage. They were experts in various fields of magic.

Alis-art’h had a similar situation, though she’d acquired her five spouses individually rather than in pairs.

Tesen-art’h had been married to two women prior to his death, and they still lived here with the family.

The spouses seemed to be the backbone of the family structure. They made children, raised children, and when the making and raising of children allowed for it, they continued to function as highly qualified wizards who devoted themselves to handling matters for the siblinghold’s knights and the Rapport as a whole.

Alden was mildly curious about whether or not all of the spouses were in love, in the human fairytale sense, with their knight and with each other. But whatever the answer was, the people involved would probably think the question missed an important part of their relationship. The family was a dream and a duty the spouses had contractually committed themselves to when they married into it.

There was love, trust, and mutual purpose.

And a lot of that purpose was making more art’hs. In batches. Which took Alden way too long to figure out.

“They all try to have babies at the same time?” he asked, when he finally realized that Stuart’s references to “groups” of his siblings and cousins meant something a little more formalized than he’d assumed.

“Not at exactly the same time. The ages usually <<span>> three or four years.”

“That’s interesting. Why do they do it that way?”

“Most children born into the family won’t become hn’tyons. But having close companions in that life increases the chances that you’ll <<thrive>>, and siblings are natural companions. Twins and triplets who become knights together are known to do well. And our parents all hope we’ll find the same thing Lind-otta and Esh-erdi have found in each other. It’s rare, especially at their age. Most of the successes so far have been between younger people who’ve been close to each other from their early childhood.”

“Lind-otta and Esh-erdi!” Alden said. “Please tell me what they are to each other.”

Stuart opened his mouth.

“After you finish the art’h family explanation,” Alden added. “I’m making notes.”

“On my family?”

“Is that okay?”

Stuart nodded. “What do the notes say about me?”

“Nothing. I can remember you just fine without notes. So batches of babies…”

“The more children you have at once, the more likely it is that you’ll have multiple who choose the highest path together. It’s also easier for Father and Aunt Alis to arrange to be home for important life <<markers>> if everyone has them within the same year or two. If I’d been born here at the Rapport, with the set of siblings and cousins older than me and without difficulties, then I would probably have seen much less of Father while I was growing up. He stayed here for me…don’t wander too close to that circle of brightgrass. I’d rather not explain what it is until you meet my brother and he has a chance to make an impression. His project there is maybe a little too strange.”

Grass circle brother, Alden mentally wrote. Strange even by Stuart’s standards.

“How many kids were in the last set?” he asked.

“If you only count my brothers and sisters, and Aunt Alis and Tesen’s children—eighteen,” said Stuart. “But some of my siblings and cousins from the earlier groups do try to match their own child-having to our parents’ schedule, so there were a few more.”

“I think it would be amazing to grow up with twenty other kids,” said Alden.

“Me too,” said Stuart. “But they were all older than me, and because of how I was, they felt much older sometimes. There are always some in-between children around, but I would have enjoyed being a part of the big group.”

“Alis just had triplets,” said Alden.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Stuart brightened. “Yes! She was starting off a new set. One of her spouses is pregnant now, too. And one of Uncle Tesen’s wives. I hope my parents will decide to join them before it’s too late.”

They are really going to need to commit to adding some floors onto their house, thought Alden.

******

They arrived outside a tall cottage that had its doors wide open to reveal a workshop that looked like something cooked up by a person in the middle of a dream. Inside the building, pitchers, jars, and cups stood on shelves or were suspended from the ceiling in webs of light like they’d been captured by magic-wielding spiders. Out front, there was a tan-colored, hive-shaped structure that Alden guessed was a kiln based on absolutely nothing but the fact that he thought people who made pottery were supposed to have some kind of kiln.

There was also a round basin large enough to swim in embedded in the ground. A woman who must have been Olorn-art’h was standing beside it, manipulating the substance inside. It was off-white and had a texture Alden decided to call “pourable mud.” The Primary’s wife was making a staccato click that Alden thought sounded like Kabir going nuts with his chopping board. The mud in the basin was reacting to the noise by fountaining up in places.

“We’ll wait,” said Stuart, loudly enough that Alden thought it was probably more for Olorn-art’h’s benefit than his.