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Updated: September 15, 2025
"This is a fine thing you give me, Assha, and the Mother will be pleased, for in many years she has not had such a curtain for her secret place. Also, I am but a little man; the quarrels of great ones are not for me. Since Lurgha has accepted your words this is none of my affair. Yet I will not go back to the village for a while with your permission, Assha.
The superstitions of the people would lead them to shun both the site of the post and Ashe himself as cursed and taboo. "If the Wrath of Lurgha had struck at Assha, would Assha still live to walk upon this road?" Ashe prodded the ground with the tip of his bowstave. "Yet Assha walks, as you see him; Assha talks, as you hear him. It is ridiculous to answer him with the nonsense of little children "
So now the village will make offerings to Lurgha and beg his favor, and the Mother will no more have those to harken to her words and offer her the first fruits " "But from whence came this bird which was Lurgha, can you tell me that, she who waits upon the Mother?" "What difference does it make from what direction Lurgha came? That does not add nor take from his power."
Ross knew him well enough by now to sense his preoccupation. "You found something?" "A new set of ghosts," Ashe replied with a strange little smile. "Ghosts!" McNeil pounced upon that. "The Reds like to play the supernatural angle, don't they? First the voice of Lurgha and now ghosts. What do these ghosts do?"
But it was the work of tribesmen, or their counterfeits. There is also a nasty rumor speeding about that the ghosts do not relish traders and that they might protest intrusions of such with penalties all around " "Like the Wrath of Lurgha," supplied Ross. "There is a certain repetition in this which suggests a lot to the suspicious mind," Ashe agreed.
The Wrath of Lurgha is hot, but so too is the wrath of Assha." Ashe contorted his face in such a way that Lal squirmed and looked away. When the tribesman spoke, all his former authority and bluster had gone. "Assha knows that I am as his dog. Let him not turn upon me his swift-cutting big knife, nor the arrows from his lightning bow.
Little by little they dragged the story out of him. Lal was poor, so poor that he had never dared dream of owning for himself some of the precious things the hill traders displayed to the wealthy of Nodren's town. But he was also a follower of the Great Mother's, rather than one who made sacrifices to Lurgha.
"Because you serve the Mother and you are jealous for her and her service. If Lurgha is a mighty god, you wanted to see his acts with your own eyes." When she finally answered, there was anger as well as frustration in her voice. "And you know of my shame then, Assha. For Lurgha came on a bird he came, and he did even as he said he would.
"Hands and feet of the Mother, she who sows what may be reaped " "Outland stranger who is under the Wrath of Lurgha," the other mocked him in the voice of Cassca. "What do you want, outlander, that you dare to come here where no man may enter?" "That which you know. For on the night when Lurgha came you also saw " Ross heard the hiss of a sharply drawn breath. "How knew you that, outlander?"
"She is the closest thing to a priestess that this tribe knows, and she serves a goddess older and more powerful than Lurgha the Mother Earth, the Great Mother, goddess of fertility and growth. Nodren's people believe that unless Cassca performs her mysteries and sows part of the first field in the spring there won't be any harvest.
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