If there are three Namelesses, and Anshen doesn’t want to tell us anything at all!  Except that it’s going to be so dangerous that if we know what we’re going to do, is it so strange that I thought we’d never live? If I’ve never have to meet another God until I meet Naigha, well, that’s fine with me! But we survived, and now everything seems like it was the world’s worst nightmare, except that Master Jeran is real, and I’m back in Turenay. We’re now living in the school, except that most time I’m with Master Jeran. When we came back, turns out, he didn’t think we’d come back as well, and he’d made a little sketch of me, for himself, to remember me by: But I’m still alive! And so is Lesla, and Vurian, and even Arin, our naughty as-it-were brother. All of us are in Turenay now, and I think Lord Vurian is still going to have a stern discussion with us. But I’ve also made the paintings for the children’s ward in hospital! A pike, a don’t-exist-beast, a pig with piglets and a pie! And now I want to paint pancakes. Or eat them. Or both.

Ever since we’ve been in the Order House in Essle, we’ve been having the weirdest dreams. Well, that was sort of what we wanted, we wanted to dream with Vurian, and help him figure out which Gods he wanted to get out of his head. This is the first of them: in our dream, we woke up in darkness. We felt we were moving, in a cart on a bumpy road. Each of us was locked up in a separate cage, and I had a litte oil lamp in my cage. I lit the lamp and then we saw there were four cages! Someone called Fian was locked up in the fourth cage. He belonged to the plain old nasty Nameless. He’s also from the south, from the place where servants of the Nameless give the gifted children Valdyan names. And everyone had something in their cage: I had the lamp, Lesla had a cat, Vurian a sword and Fian a shield. It was all really weird. But we did want to get out! So I tried to break open the cage, but I failed at that. Lesla was smarter, she turned into a cat, and both cats left the […]

So we were staying with the stablehand, Arin, and the lame horse. The horse just didn’t know what to do: it wanted to stay upright, but its leg was hurting, so it didn’t want to stay upright. Then Lesla made it feel like the pain wasn’t so bad, and the stable hand was impressed with that. We stayed all night, up in a little meadow, and caught fish and crayfish for dinner. In the morning, the real horse doctor arrived. He and Lesla huddled together, and Lesla was glowing! And the horse doctor was impressed, and Lesla looked like she’d finally found what she would want to be doing for ever and ever. And that’s good, because just counting and doing sums isn’t doing anything real. The horse doctor wanted to stay with the horse, and sent us and the stablehand to Gralen. Only two days, he said, unless we’d go fast, when it’d be only one day. Little did he know! In the morning, we left for Gralen. And then we sort of kind of like of felt like there was something going on. So we asked Arin to take care of the horses, and went into the forest […]

We woke up because someone was knocking on the door. It took a while before we realized where we were: in the mother of the queen’s house! There was a girl outside, called Lyse, she was not much older than us! And she was bringing us water, not for drinking, but for washing. Well, we wetted our noses and our bottoms, and went out to discover breakfast. Breakfast was impressive! Everyone was at the breakfast table, from Lord Vurian to us, all their children who were still living with them, even though they’re ever so old, but the youngest is younger than us, he’s called Radan and he’s pretty cute, almost like Rovan. There was so much to eat that when Lady Rava took us to the school I had the most wonderful belly-ache, like as if I were bursting! Lady Rava first took us into her office, and gave us some paper and ink and pens to write or draw while she got through her morning’s work. First we peeked through the books on her shelves, but there wasn’t any book with interesting drawings in, and the letters were too small and crabby to read, even for Lesla. We […]

Rhinla’s turn. She prefers to do it in pictures! They were fighting! There were lots of dark clouds over Veray, and those were very scary! But Master Jeran said it was all people of the Nameless fighting amongst each other. It was impressive though! So I asked Master Jeran for a sheet of canvas and paint, and I started painting the clouds and the fight! I added lots of light, too, but I later learned that the light disappears from the painting, it doesn’t stay stuck. And then I noticed I was using lots of yellow and red (that makes orange!!!) — and at the same time, master Jeran and Lesla yelled, a house is on fire! And we asked Master Jeran if there were people still inside the house, and he said, yes, and they’re locked in, with semsin (whatever that may be). But burning people is BAD! So we ran towards the house. There were lots of people handing each other buckets with water, that almost blocked the street, but we managed to squeeze through. That wasn’t so easy, especially because Jeran isn’t as small as we are! When we came to the house, people were milling around, […]

When I had eaten a bit, we went back to the Palace. We got to keep our boat, so we’re still pretty rich! But Cynla wanted to teach us more stuff, and she wanted to do that in the Palace, besides, that’s where we were supposed to go back to. On our way back, there were more barges bringing dead people out to the sea — it looks like everyone is dying! Or at least, lots of people. Cynla was really down and done up when we got back. Even though we had borrowed lots of pillows and cushions to make her comfy in the boat, she had started bleeding again, but by now we knew what to look for: if she makes a grimace and tries to hide her breast behind her fist, she’s bleeding again. Stupid! Why would she want to hide that! We put her to bed, and I went out to scrounge food from the kitchens, and got a nice big plate full of things that were new to me, and to Lesla. Then we got a bandaging person to do the bandages for Cynla, but that took a lot of nagging! They promised all the […]

Waterbirds, 5 People have tried to kill us! They have tried to shoot arrows at us and kill us, and we were only bringing Jerna to Master Jeran! And we didn’t want to let ourselves be killed, so we fought back, and now I have killed two people! I have bitten them and drowned them and… And now I feel horrible and I feel those people I killed in my mouth all the time, and taste them all the time, too. It’s really icky, killing people. We do have two boats, now, because we took the boat of the people who attacked us. Or rather, one boat belongs to the boat man, but the other one properly belongs to us. We were punting towards the main channel when the other boat came at us, and then we saw a woman take a bow and arrows, and she was firing at us! She missed at first, so I jumped overboard and swam to their boat, and tried to upend it, but that was hard, but I managed to make the two men fall into the water. Well, I bit them so they had to let go of me, and I sat […]

Waterbirds, 3 Oh gosh! Oh joy! I bet you’ve never, ever in your life had such a wonderful waking-up as Lesla and I had! We had our bellies still full with bacon and bean soup! I woke up because Lesla made a noise with her behind, and then so did I. Bacon! Beans! Onions! And there was still some left! But Jerna said, we shouldn’t eat it all, we should bring some to the Swamp Lady. I didn’t think we should, and said, isn’t that like Arin bringing part of his catch to his “master”, but Lesla agreed, and said we should share. Well, sharing is fine! So we took a big earthenware bowl full of good soup between us, and went up to the Swamp Lady’s place. She was right there, and wasn’t being weird with weird herbs or stuff, and she did like the smell of the soup, and said, she’d eat it later on. She didn’t even hint at sharing it with us! But well, that’s swamp ladies for you. Bring ’em stuff, and they take it all. But Lessla, she was interested, and wanted to know if we could help her. So, she said, you can […]

Waterbirds, 1 I’m Rhinla. Yes — that means duck, and that’s my name! My best friend’s name is Lesla, and that means kingfisher. And that’s not weird! We’re named like that because we’re with the Waterbirds. That’s what we call ourselves. We, that’s me, and Lesla, of course, but also little Rovan, who is only five or so, and Faran and Jerna and Arin. Faran and Jerna sometimes make love! They are old, Faran older than Jerna, but old all the same. Arin isn’t that old, but much older than us. Lesla and me, we’re nine or ten, or eleven, depends on whether we’re quarreling. But we don’t quarrel a lot! And we’re the Waterbirds, we’re waterbird enough that we don’t eat duck or goose or teal or mallard or swan. Faran is big and strong, and usually has a strong stick with him, but he uses that mostly to lean on, he doesn’t beat us! And Arin has got a real knife, made out of iron, and I am allowed to keep it sharp! Jerna cooks for us, except when she’s really ill, as she was some years ago when she had a big, swollen belly and the swamp […]