The Zhruuming House

Finding the Zhruuming House from Sythra is tricky hard. Its proprietors have a habit of drifting, and the House drifts with them. To start, you follow the falling sun along Rivverroad for about a week, then peel off lodestar way when you first sight Red Plinth. It’ll take a day or two in the shrubland ‘afore you see the flattop of it, and when you do, you take a left and keep going ‘till you hear the humming. Or feel it, if your senses are such inclined.

Once you got ahold of the signal, you hone your senses sharp. The only directioning now is your ears, so you best listen, and listen close. You follow the changes, see. Louder isn’t always right – sometimes the sound bounces off the Plinth and overlaps at empty points. More correct is the pitch, for lack of a better word. Not like two keys on a squeeze-box, but like a pulsing? Or… 

Aw hell, it’s too tough to put into words. Just hire a guide, and they’ll get you there. 

Anyhow, what I’m trying to put across is, finding Zhruuming House under normal conditions is a pain. All that talk so when I say this year was a particular pain in the haunches, you understand I’m not just talking about the days on horseback. Not that weeks in a saddle help matters, no, just not what I mean.

After another day of sweating up empty, I look to my Paired Eye, Kitj. He was shoving his bronzed face to the end of his neck looking out towards open sky, straining his ears. I wonder to interrupt him or no. We weren’t bone tired yet, but damn if a good sit wouldn’t be welcome.

Kitj answered my question for me, dismounted his horse, and unpacked his roll. Every movement he made of his thin arms flicked irritation. At last, he flopped down, put his wide brim over his face, and pretended to sleep. I knew so because when he actually slept, his feet would go still.

I sat all of the red hours that day watching clouds. Wispy clouds, mostly, not the long even cloud banks that pass over Sythra. Clouds that trick the eye and take shapes, even for adults that lost the game in growing. Like me, I guess.

There’s a lot that’s hard to explain to one who hasn’t taken the trip. You ask a Sythran about the Krzk Shrublands and you either get romantic notions about the Zykric ranchers, or you get glassy-eyed, dismissive boredom. Not a lot to do out in the shrubs, compared to a big city, and Sythra was especial big.

It’s a state of mind, the shrubs put you in, that just putting in to words doesn’t quite get. Maybe the Asyla Monks would. Anyhow. There’s a lot of sitting when you’re out in the shrubs. A lot of sitting and waiting for time to pass. I suppose it should get boring. That’s what’s hard to parse for a Sythran. That sitting could anyway be anything but a chore. 

Somehow, it doesn’t. I think… It’s like this. You sit in the shrubs a while and a Sythran would say nothing doing. Maybe a pack of kitnips scurry by, maybe a group of white flitters dance their flocking dance. That’s about all you’re like to get in the way of action.

Sit a while longer, though, and you notice everything is changing but slow. Too slow for city eyes, maybe. The sky filtering black to gold-blue dawn, turning white at  high sun, then bronzing back to black. The cloud wisps move and shift. The Red Plinth, stone and solid, wouldn’t change, you would think. And it doesn’t, except that you travel by it and its never quite the same Plinth from one day to the next. I’m talking changes of hours, of days, of weeks. It’s not a city mind, what you need to appreciate the Krzk Shrublands. It’s a slow earth mind.

That’s what I mean when I say I sat. I couldn’t grudge Kitj for his annoyance. I just couldn’t get that worked up, myself. You get a green-heart Sythran talking about it, they say it must be a religious experience, what I’m sitting in. They talk about upheavals in the soul, transcendence, divine visions and all that. No, not really. It’s just sitting. I could never get a Sythran to quite believe it, though.

It was getting on towards the hours of Deep Stars when I heard it. A pulse in the zhruum. A long swell, like the ocean pulling back into a big wave. I was about bowled over when the wave hit. Kitj jumped awake, knife in hand, scanning the dark, his small nostrils flaring and scenting. 

I myself was midway into a spell mandra, fire flickering at my fingers, watching Kitj. If there were threat there, that knife would be thrown, and I’d be firing before he could pull the next. Which is saying something. Kitj’s a pretty quick draw.

We waited a tick. And then another.

Nothing. Just sand crickets. The zhruum had gone back to normal.

We exhaled at the same time. Kitj flopped back on his pack. Neither of us needed to say anything. Neither of us would have wanted to, besides. The zhruum has a way of making you not want to talk. All that mattered was, whatever happened was done. 

It’s funny. Thinking back, the wave wasn’t all that big a change if you put a measure on it. It’s just the zhruum stays so constant, even a little ripple is pretty potent.

***

Finding the Zhruuming House the next day was easy. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a clear signal as that day’s, and I don’t expect I ever will again. I could see Kitj was relieved to finally have a bearing. He was looking up instead of out. It was as easy as sitting, getting to where we were going.

Zhruuming House isn’t a house, exactly. That’s just what people who live in houses call it. The Zykr call it something I can’t pronounce because I don’t have the mandibles for it. Communication is tough, when it comes down to it.

Backing up a bit. It’s not a house in the sense of a house, but it is a dwelling. It’s made of dirt, and shrub, and mud, and Zykr spit, just like all Zykr hives. Zhruuming House isn’t a hive, either, though. It’s a personal dwelling, which is pretty odd for these folk. Then again, that’s why it’s important to them.

Kitj and I sidled up to the Zhruuming House. We dismounted. I got out my squeeze box, then looked at Kitj. He shook his head. He never once has wanted to go in and meet Kzapth, but I always asked just in case he ever changed his mind. So I shouldered the pack of offerings and went to knock.

It’s not knocking, what you do to get the Zykr’s attention. It’s more of a buzz. Humans can’t do it proper, mostly, though there are some clever bardly types who’ve figured some tricks for it. I don’t got the knack for it. So I walked up to the door (not a door, just an opening) settled my fingers on the squeeze box, and then kind of trembled my hands and fingers to get the right sound. It’s not a technique taught in music school, what I heard.

There was a subtle change in the zhruum. All clear to go. I looked at Kitj one more time. He was tossing a coin over and over, which is what he did when he was nervous. This got me worried. Kitj always heard more than I did, and he only rarely got unsettled. I wondered what he was hearing I couldn’t. Too bad for me, I guess. I shrugged it off and headed in.

Kzapth sat on a kaztl, a kind of traditional rug the Zykr make. It’s bright and sky-colored, or I guess it must’ve been. It’s kind of raggedy and dim with dust now. I made another tremor on my squeeze box, a kind of hello, the zhruum pulsed a bit, and all go. I sat on the dust next to another, slightly less bedraggled kaztl, and proffered my offering – three sacks of sugar, and two jugs of sweet tea. Kzapth pulsed another affirmative. I took my cue and sat on the guest katzl.

Now came the tricky bit. Kzapth knew exactly what I was here for – I only ever came for the one reason, and it was the same reason any Sythran would ever want to see him – but it was improper not to assume. So I had to ask. I set my fingers on the squeeze box again and scratched my way through the situation.

Trouble in Sythra. Looking for omen.

It’s always hard to know if a Zykr is looking at you, because compound eyes don’t track like a human’s, but I knew Kzapth was looking at me. He was waiting for my ears to get into gear. I closed my eyes to tell him I was listening. I’d seen the sand reading before, anyways, I didn’t need to see it again.

The zhruum stilled to a low, steady pitch. I could hear Kzapth scratching at the sand with his coxa, picking it up and sifting it across his leg hairs. I’ve been told the Zkyr would be able to hear the shape of every individual grain they touched. I wouldn’t doubt it. How else would a sand reading work?

The sand sifting stopped, the zhruum picked up a more complex tone. I took a deep breath and focused. Time to translate.

Shaking ground, shaking sky.

Fire mound, bloody eye. 

Crystal honey, spoiled spit.

First part was easy. That’s just Kzapth confirming bad trouble. 

The last bit was also straightforward, if you knew Zykr. Only Zykr queens ate crystal honey, so they say “queen” as a stand in for any kind of human governance, queenly or not. Spoiled spit is especial bad news. I guess you could say it’s the Zykr way of saying “poisoning the well.” Or “a bad apple.” Or both. This case, probably both.

The middle bit was too cryptic, too generic. The “rhymes” connected it to the trouble, but the reading was otherwise obtuse. I wondered a tick if Kzapth was hiding something. He’d done so before, to my great trouble. But it also happened that certain events were too complex for a sand reading. Could also be my ears weren’t subtle enough. Zykr hear a lot more than we do, mostly through their legs I’m told.

I’d be pushing asking more. One sack of sugar, one stanza is all you get. The sweet tea was just because we were friends. Of a sort. I scratched at my beard stubble a bit, then opened my eyes. It was only then I noticed Kzapth was off somehow. Kind of hunched a bit, maybe. It’s hard to chit-chat with a Zykr, but with the previous night’s zhruum wave, I got to curious a bit. 

While pondering, something clicked in my ears. Not a sound click, an understanding click. I heard what Kitj heard. Or couldn’t hear, as it were. Something was missing in the zhruum since last time. There was a layer gone.

I fluttered a “thank you” and then, polite as I could, asked if I could ask a question. A non-omen question, I clarified. Kzapth buzzed an affirmative. Then carefully, very carefully, I threaded my squeeze box through what I had to ask. One thing I learned very early on in the shrubs, you don’t screw up Zykr women’s names.

Where is Zazhlia-zg-Zh’zlk?

There was a long pause in the zhruum. An uncanny pause. I became keenly aware of silence, like when you finally dig out a stickburr that’s been lodged in your leg a week. It was all the answer I needed, but Kzapth spoke one anyways. 

The Great Hive.

The zhruum quivered, agitated. I wasn’t quite sure it was his grief or my impropriety. Could be both. Probably both. 

The zhruum shuddered a bit and settled. Zazhlia-zg-Zh’zlk contribution to the zhruum was now painfully obvious to me. The tone was flattened and shallow. Hollow, somehow. It would be like looking out on the shrubland and finding the whole of the Plinth was gone.

We sat an awkward moment. Looking back, I don’t remember starting to play. I just remember, someway, my fingers had gotten into The Hills of Thylla Green. I don’t know why that song. Now I’ve got some distance between, it seems a wholly wrong song for the situation. It’s not a lament, it’s not a love song. It’s just a ditty about how pretty Thylla Green is, almost a nonsense song when you get to it.

But the way it came out... it came out slow. So slow. If a Sythran were to listen in, they’d not even know I was playing the tune. Not even music, just droning. The tune runs about six minutes, four if you got a showy fiddler. Someway I stretched that song out to about an hour, and I’ll never know how. Just sitting on notes, chords, intervals. Just sitting until they changed. I wasn’t changing them, I don’t think. 

Maybe it was one of those religious epiphanies the romantics like to talk about. I kind of doubt it. No divine lights, no visions, no grand upheaval of the soul. We were just sitting. Just that we were sitting on tones, is all. 

Just sitting.

***

By the time I left, Kitj had stopped his coin tossing. If he was calm, I was calm.

“The trouble is bad. Worse than,” I said. 

We both startled. It was the first time in two weeks either of us had said a word. The words felt a trespass. They sounded foreign, like we had forgotten our own tongue. Too late to take them back, I continued on.

“Best drop off the omen and carry on elsewhere. Not sure where, just not Sythra.”

Kitj nodded. He got the picture.

On the way back, I thought a lot of city thoughts. What were the fire mounds? Whose was the bloody eye? Did Kzapth appreciate what I done? Did I get Zazhlia-zg-Zh’zlk’s name right?  Had I unwittingly made enemy of the whole of Zykr? For that matter, who were my enemies in Sythra? There were bad bones somewhere in there – worse than usual, I mean – and I didn’t want any part of it.

There was nothing doing about these questions. I tried to focus again on the open sky, bring my mind back to the clouds. 

Day after day, the zhruum left our ears. 

Day after day, my peace left with it.