Chapter 1: The Spire of the Yellow Robes

Tales of the Union:

The Six Spires of Egtor

© 2014 - Vanessa Ravencroft

(Inspired by SCI-FI stories picture)

(This story takes place in the Galactic Chronicles universe. The year is 5040 OTT . War against the Shiss has just started, but it is hardly registered by most of the Union. The Nul are now part of the Union and so are the Golden.

The place is a garden world about 3500 light years past the outermost fringes of Union space in the Spinward Sector.)

Chapter 1: The Spire of the Yellow Robes

Hygi was very fortunate to be chosen as an acolyte to the Yellow Robes of Kastirin, but he missed his family, his brothers and his mother most of all.

Two cold seasons ago, the Yellow Robes came to the village, as they did every year. After they blessed the harvest and predicted the flooding of the plains, they sometimes picked one or two young males to go with them. The boys taken would become acolytes and perhaps eventually don the yellow robes and the frightening hoods and become brothers of the Order.

His father told him how fortunate he was. Being picked by the Yellow robes was  the best that could happen to him. It was better than starving to death when the floods didn’t come or working the Matroo fields day in and day out to fill the storage houses of the King.

No one really spoke of the Reki slavers that sometimes raided villages and took young men and women, never to be seen again.

The worst fate of course was being picked by the King’s recruiters and forced to fight the Reki.”

Life for the valley people was harsh and hunger, death and misery were constant companions.

Hygi sighed, of course his father was right, up here on the spire of the Order of the Yellow Goddess, there was always food. No slavers could come up here and the King did not press Yellow Robes to fight for his army.

Back when he was still with his family, there wasn’t always enough food and his father and mother struggled to keep him and his eight siblings fed, especially when the floods didn’t reach the small patches the peasants were allowed to have for their own sustenance. The food his family and all the others ate was always the same, boiled Matroo, sometimes with flood snails or slurry fishlings thrown in.

Up here the Yellow Robes had Matroo bread, Nagli-fish, roasted White Birds and White Bird eggs. There was wondrous white powder  called salt. It made Matroo taste completely different. And there was always enough of everything. He loved the sweet Nitri berries that the farmers of the upper valley brought as their tribute. Brother Unti, his master often gave him a handful of these red sweet tasting fruits when he was pleased with Reiki.

No one was idle up here, and everyone had chores, but it was not the same as the backbreaking toil in the Matroo fields, every day from sunrise to sunset.

His duties and chores filled most of the day, but of there was also study and learning. He liked learning and hearing about things. The most amazing thing he learned was reading and writing. The strange marks and dots the kings collector's always put in soft clay when they came to tally the harvest were not magical and secret ways to banish demons, but simple reports of what was collected.

Hygi could read them now, knew how the marks were added to make larger counts. He also knew of the texts that actually talked about demons and gods. These scrolls  were much more complex and never left the archives of the Order.

Today was the feast day of the Sixth Incarnation of the Yellow Goddess and the temple was closed for anyone but to those who worshipped the Sixth Incarnation. As he had been picked by Brother Unti who worshipped the First Incarnation, he too was exempt to participate in the celebrations. It would have been nice, the Sixth Incarnation represented food and harvest. There was always food and drink involved in any of the feast days of the Sixth Incarnation and perhaps the main reason, the Sixth Incarnation was the most popular and it had the most worshippers.

There was always a sense of competition and rivalry among the Yellow Robes, as there were many Incarnations to the Goddess, and here on top of the spire, the Yellow Robes served three of the goddess aspects.

Two years had past and by the end of the cold season he would go into his third year.

It was now that he understood his father and had to admit  he was better off than his brothers and sisters and pretty much everyone else he knew, but the spire was cold, always cold. He missed his mother most of all.

Because there was no temple service today,  Brother Unti his mentor had told him to scrub and polish the wooden stairs that led all the way to the roof hatch of the Temple of the Goddess, and the highest point of the monastery, perched high upon a spire of natural rock and stone. Reaching far beyond the forest canopy, almost reaching the very clouds of the sky.

He had climbed the stairs all the way to the top where he opened the hatch so he could enjoy the breathtaking view. On a clear day one could see all the way to the far distant river, or to the snow covered mountains that blocked the horizon, into the other direction. He was standing inside the open hatch, from here you could step onto the copper roof. Of course this would be would be suicide without a rope harness, as the slanted surface of the roof was slick. Falling from the spire would end over a thousand triple-steps below, smashing into the ground of the Gray Forest that surrounded the spire rock.

He did not envy the acolytes and brothers if the Third Aspect who had to come out here to repair and polish the copper roofs, but then the Third Aspect was that of the builders and makers,

Even when he was little and still in the village, everyone knew about the spires occupied by the Robes, but he remembered how deeply impressed he was when he saw this spire for the first time. It was a rock formation rising past the canopies of the tallest trees, into dizzying heights.

Far on its distant top were a collection of temples and buildings built many hundred of seasons ago by the first Yellow Robes, after the Goddess demanded they seek out a tall location for her place of worship.

While the spire cloister could be accessed with baskets suspended on ropes and winched up by a muscle powered hoist, every acolyte had to ascent it once. It represented the ascent and climb of the first Yellow Robes following the command of the Goddess.

Narrow planks of wood resting on iron spikes  and chains fastened to the rock for a hand hold wall serpentined all the way to the Old entrance. The Old entrance was, so they told him only halfway up, but it was still very far above the ground.

It was a dangerous and terrifying ascent. He remembered his hands cramping around the rough chain as he inched his way across the moist and slippery planks. It had took him a long time, and he had not felt more exhausted all his life, as he dropped on the floor behind the Old entrance with shaking legs. Later he was told that not every acolyte made it all the way, either falling to their death or by giving up.

No one was forced to become a Yellow Robe, he too could at any time climb down and walk back to the village. Something he promised his father not to do.

He was so caught up in his own musings, that he almost missed the strange shape that was descending  from the heavily overcast sky and the not so distant clouds.

Now the White Birds and the smaller black Snatchers were known to be caught by an updraft and carried all the way to the clouds once in awhile, but what he saw was not a bird.

He almost forgot to breathe.

It was quite distant but it had the shape of a person. It descended without the aid of wings, much slower than something falling, then it was out of sight, as it disappeared past the roof edge.

Had he just dreamt, or did he really see a messenger from the gods?