The hypnotizing ripples foamed serenely along the surface of the clear, almost transparent mountain river. It divided the blossoming plateau into two halves. To both the west and east rose the snow-capped peaks of the ancient mountains.
It was said that before the arrival of the New Monarchy, with its guns and "analyzers," the people of the valley remembered the names of these mountain peaks. They’d brought small offerings to roadside shrines and temples, honoring those who’d lived on the plateau, just as those on the plateau had honored the mountain gods.
But then the cannon salvos had echoed through the air, and black powder was turned into fertilizer for new crops in the fields... And somewhere to the north, more miles of railroad tracks were always being laid down, with steam locomotives rattling their steel wheels.
Magical beasts, whose cores were once the coveted resource of wizards, were either exterminated or driven so deep into the mountains that hunting them became impossible.
The scientists of the New Monarchy drew maps and translated the local dialect into the common tongue, but they didn’t bother with the myriad names and traditions. Then, 196 years ago, after the end of the Dark Lord’s rebellion, which had gathered many races of the Firstborn under its banner, the scribes named this mountain range the Alcade, and the natives were called Alcadians.
That had been the decision of the scholars in their scholarly mantles and their campuses in the Metropolis. They never asked the mountain people for their opinion, much less their gods. Scholars generally didn’t believe in gods and didn’t care if the feeling was mutual...
Time passed, and soon, due to maps, books, railroads, roads made from strange stone, schools, saloons, horseshoes, steel plows, and many other heaps of metal and objects of "civilization," the valley dwellers themselves forgot what they were once called.
Shrines were abandoned and surrendered to moss and the mountain forests. The names of the gods were forgotten. Ancient rituals and customs were dressed up in the costumes of children’s holidays. Wise men in capes were replaced by village teachers who came to work in the schools of stone and wood. Their inconspicuous suits smelled of chalk and cheap spirits.
For some reason, more saloons were built than schools...
Even the ancient altars, where only the most secret paths led, fell under the onslaught of clanking metal and the rustling, scholarly robes of civilization. Now, in their place, stood the wooden churches of the Face of Light, and a pastor in black attire with a book of holy scripture in his hand preached there.
And so, the valley that had once worshipped the mountain gods and their descendants had become just another "Subject of the New Monarchy, under the control of the Three Chambers of the Tenth Convocation Parliament and the Twentieth Congress Government," called the "Foothill Province."
That’s what the children were taught in those very same schools in their Social Structure classes, anyway.
It took a little less than two centuries for civilization to turn the valley’s inhabitants into true Alcadians. The kind whose women wore dresses, worked as seamstresses in stuffy factory workshops, served drinks in saloons and taverns, raised children, brought them to school, faithfully attended church on the sixth day, and loved their husbands and fathers.
The same husbands and fathers who toiled in the mines, extracting that precious resource with which the Alcade mountains were so rich, or who strained their shoulders in the sawmills. Husbands and fathers also sweated in the furnaces of the adjacent factories, where their beloved wives and daughters sewed them thick work clothes.
Both bent their backs in the fields, toiling on farms and looking to a surely brighter future, hoping that their children, after a good education, might even become accountants or, with the Face of Light ’s blessing, lawyers or doctors, and move to the city.
The city...
They say that cities are like villages, only hundreds of times larger. They say that there are houses made from artificial stone, metal and glass there; they say there are streets where carriages ride without horses, and iron poles burn on the sidewalk, providing light without oil or wood. They say that hundreds of thousands of people live there and...
They say a lot.
Especially those Alcadians who have been lucky enough to visit. In all the surrounding settlements and villages put together, there wouldn’t be more than a hundred such people. It was a long way to the nearest big city of the New Monarchy. And to get to the first railroad station, one had to cross wild prairies. This meant spending a week in a stagecoach in the middle of an endless sea of grass and hills. A sea full of land pirates and predatory beasts.
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Without even understanding what the runes on the tablet were spelling out, the child would feel that there was a certain mystery hidden behind what was happening. Something that seemed ordinary to everyone else, but was still magical and mystical to them, a child who had just started school.
Children could feel this world much more deeply and more subtly and would know the power of names.
The adults, glancing back to make sure no neighbor who might report them to the authorities was listening in, would whisper in response:
"Matabar."
"Matabar..." The children would repeat with a sigh until their mouths were covered by a hand.
It was forbidden to speak the name of this Firstborn race aloud. If not outright imprisonment, a fine from the Sheriff was certain to come in response to such an audacious act of defiance. And when one worked six days out of seven, sixteen hours out of twenty-four, and barely earned eight imperial exes a month, a fine of four exes and fifty kso was not a sum one could afford to pay just to convey knowledge from the distant past.
"Do they still live there?" The child would then ask, looking out of the window to where the reflection of the oil lamp danced so enticingly.
As if somewhere among the mountain peaks, fires had already been lit and the Matabar now danced and sang songs, communicating with their terrible gods.
"There are rumors," the mother would say as she washed the dishes, "that the family of rangers who guard the mountain forest against smugglers have traces of ancient blood. But those are just rumors, dear."
"Can I be a Mat..." The child would inevitably start to say, and then, upon seeing the stern looks of their mother and father, immediately fall silent.
They would sense that there was a certain mystery there, a secret in all of this. And they would want to be a part of it — to be like their parents. To hold their tongue just as tight.
Looking out of the window, they would fantasize about the students of the beasts, the mighty Matabar people. But not for long. Soon, they too would be caught up in the millstones of civilization. School, work, and the same nighttime conversations with their own children. They would have no interest in the ranger family, who rarely showed up in town, usually just to sell furs and buy flour and spices.
And so, they would never know that somewhere among the mountain peaks, where the hypnotizing ripples foamed serenely along the surface of the clear, almost transparent river, on the bend, occupying a wide hill, stood an old three-story house. One big enough to house four generations of a family under its roof.
But its dilapidated, moss-covered roofs had long since sagged, and there was no laughter or song on its many verandas — only broken crates, smashed furniture, and other junk scattered about. One of the two chimneys had collapsed, and the other only occasionally puffed smoke.
All the windows above the second floor had long since been boarded up and covered with mats, peeking through the gaps in the shabby wood.
The pier by the river was hopelessly broken — most of it had been carried into the mountains by the current, and what remained was only used as a washboard.
A family of four had no use for the huge watchtower built here by the civilized people of the New Monarchy. At least not all of it.
But they still loved this old, huge and strange house.
That night, as someone down in the valley told their child stories about the Matabar, the last of them looked at the lights blossoming like night flowers at the foot of the mountains without knowing anything about what was coming.