Martis Ch 2 Fayborn

An important discussion.

Martis

2

Fayborn

Martis sat cross legged across from Greystalker. His life was becoming stranger and stranger. Things were full of odd twists and turns that day. He could think of much that had happened to him since he had awakened in Faery. But the last statement by her was incomprehensible.

"What does Fayborn mean?" he asked after a long pause.

"You do know that the Fay and the humans shared this world once?" she began.

"Lore masters say that.in old stories I but never really believed it," he answered truthfully.

"It was a long time ago. You would call it a very long time ago.

"In fact, because of how close your folk live to the mists between worlds it's likely that in this area the two races lived mingling with each other.

"When that happened there were times when a Fay would tarry with a human. Their children would be a mixture of the two races. Such children would possess characteristics of both parents. The Fay blood would give some Fay power. Fayborn was what such children were called from the beginning.

"In the years since there have always been humans who possessed some Fay blood. When two such people have children there would be a small chance that the Fay blood would combine and produce a child who like their ancient ancestors would be Fayborn with the same inheritance of some Fay power.

"It seems certain that you are one of those children otherwise we could not communicate as we do."

"I don't have any powers. I don't understand how we do this, but I am sure that I have nothing else."

"I have watched you move through the forest making no sound and yet can pay enough attention to the area around you to locate what you seek. From my observation that is a gift from your Fay blood.

"Do you know anyone else who can do that?"

He thought about that for some time. The herbalist had told him that he brought four times as much material as any other forager, and of better quality.

"I would hazard a guess," she went on, "that when taught other skills that you learn much more quickly than others taught the same skills."

At once he thought of the self defense training all the able-bodied youth had each year from fifteen to seventeen.

Old Narest First sergeant of the Guard had spent every other day for eight weeks every winter training those youths. They learned the use of the bow, spear and long-knife in defending themselves and the border from threats from the forest.

The first Baroness Kryst more than a hundred years ago had instituted the program after a destructive raid by a large goblin band had wrecked havoc and pillaged along several miles of that border before she and her retainers could sweep them back into the forest..

She had decided to give her people the training to give them the chance to hold raiders back or even drive them away preventing many deaths and saving the food and loot as well as preventing the dragging away of folk into slavery.

As a result it had been more than sixty years since the folk of the border had needed help in defending themselves from those raids.

When Martis had his training he had learned so rapidly and well that by the middle of his second year's training Narest had him assisting his peers in those skills.

In his third year He had taught Martis in the use of a blade in each hand. Most trained guards could not do it well enough to use it in combat.

Holding a fifteen inch longknife in each hand Martis could even give the old veteran himself a hard time defending himself.

Martis sat staring at Greystalker as these thoughts rushed through his head. She was right.

He had learned quickly the tales of the lore masters as well.

"One more thing I can see in you is the desire to see the world beyond the barony," she added after watching his reaction to her observation.

That startled him. He had told no one that he had been saving his silver so that he could travel.

He rose and began pacing, wondering if the cat could read his mind.

Of all the tales he had heard of the rest of the world he felt drawn to the great city of Shadinar which lay north of the Forest of Mists. It was on the shore of the Inner Sea where the Arias River flowed into it. The trade of the world flowed through it and folk from all over the world had come there to live.

There were sometimes traveling merchants, minstrels and other travelers who had been in Bramnol, seat of the Baqrony.. He had listened to what they would tell of that place.

"Shadinar," he said quietly.

"Shadinar," Greystalker said., "Home of one of the Lossen who had taught the Fay in the days distant past.

"I wonder if the Losen who raised the great tower there might still be there."

"It has been more than a thousand years they couldn't still be there and how do you know that there is a Lossen Tower there?" he asked surprised.

"Shadinar is a Lossen word in the Lossen speech for the home of one of those folk," she answered, "The Lossen Towers were raised by individuals as homes for themselves as a focus to exercise power to the wider world. There are lines of ancient power connect each tower to each other and to the realms like Faery which were torn from this world by the upheavals of the Breaking War."

"Some call them Lay Lines, there are probably many other descriptions but the many believe that they create a web of powers that form the binding force of the whole world.

"The Fay believe the later but acknowledge that they are accessible sources of the power that humans call magic."

"Magic," Martis said startled, "Do you mean that there really folk that use magic? I thought that they were just old tales."

"Most old tales are most likely attempts to explain things that humans understand imperfectly," she answered, "It should be interesting for me to see how much is real."

He stood thinking that Greystalker seemed to know an awfully lot about a lot of lore, more than the lore master in Bramnol and those who sometimes to listen to the tales of the barony. They were odd folk who seemed obsessed with any bit of knowledge of lore they had never heard before.

He had been drawn by the stories of Shadinar as far back as he could remember.