Dawn of Winter (Chapter 1)

His name was Icheb. He was a trader from Cerin.

So close to Hebronus! Only a few days’ journey!

He had traveled north with his wares out of a strange wanderlust- an unexplainable and irrational need to see the far side of the continent on which he lived. He needed, for no other reason than to calm his wandering heart, to see the North Sea.

The news he brought was long and boring until he turned to matters of the church. Things were otherwise normal on the Southern Coasts. But the Oestriam was soon to lose its second Grand Prelate in less than five years. The traveler, Icheb, claimed that rumors blamed the Istrim, who were alarmed at the attempts of the Oestriam to infiltrate the North. People in the streets of Hebronus, Icheb claimed, were calling "Murder!" and "Poison!"

Aachem had no reason to believe this man in particular, but he was a southerner. There could be no doubting his features. He immediately considered returning to the south at once, to arrive at Hebronus and announce himself to the Oestriam- Ask them why, how, could they have ever forgotten him or his mission! How could they send him so far from his home, to live amongst the heathen of the north in whose veins ran blood that was as cold and foreign as this accursed weather? He wanted to make them explain to him the reasons they had wasted six years of his life! But then he would be forced to ask forgiveness for abandoning his mission without an order from the church. The very thought of his punishment drove the idea from his mind. They would send him away. He would be forced to recant his vows to the Oestriam, become as he was before he gave his oaths- no one.

Aachem had worn the robes of the Oestriam since he was a boy of only twelve high summers. For fifteen years he lived as a priest, obeying the laws and rules laid out for him, studying the knowledge they offered him. When the Grand Prelate, the Master, summoned him to the Rock of the Sun, he had never thought twice about going. When that old man, wearing those fine robes, had cleared his council chambers of everyone but Aachem and six other young priests, he felt pride that he had been singled out, hand-picked, by such an exalted man, the most exalted in the Church. And when the High Prelate told them where they were going and for what reason, he never questioned the orders, not even once. When the old man had sworn them to secrecy, Aachem had closed his lips on the matter, never once uttering a breath about it. But as the years passed, that resolve, that naïve acceptance of the infallibility of the church and its leader, had withered with each bitterly cold winter followed by each painfully short summer.

Still, he could not give up the robes. He knew nothing else. He dreamed every day of going home again, returning to the warmth of summer. If he were to return, but not to the way it was before, as a priest of the Oestriam, he cold not bear it. Yet somehow he knew that even if he were to return with the blessing of his superiors, he would not be the same. Six years in the bitter cold of the north changed a man. It had to.

So while Icheb’s news brought that longing of home back to Aachem, it did not override his senses. He lay awake long into the night trying to remember his city far away- the sun, the breeze, the bright blue of the sea, and the sound of the gulls. But he found that all he could recall were the sounds of the endlessly crashing waves of Greywater Deep and the impenetrable blackness of the North Sea.