Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars)
Kirith Kirin
by
Jim Grimsley
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Kirith Kirin Copyright 2000 by Jim Grimsley.
All rights reserved by the publisher. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the published, except for the purpose of reviews.
With thanks to Henry Camp, physics consultant to the Wise
KIRTH KIRIN
A Ducktown Press Book
Published by Ducktown Press, a subsidiary of South Pole Entertainment, LLC
P. O. Box 682946
Marietta, GA 30068
ISBN: 978-0-9832516-0-6
http://www.SouthPoleEntertainment.com
First Ducktown Press edition: January 2011
ePublished in the United States of America
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Other novels by Jim Grimsley
Forgiveness
The Last Green Tree
The Ordinary
Boulevard
Comfort and Joy
My Drowning
Dream Boy
Winter Birds
For Corey, Sarah, and Kathryn
Maps
1
In my country many lies are told about me now that I have become rich and famous, and a traveler in the northern part of the world is apt to hear every sort of fabrication about my birth and childhood. Looking back from so long after, I can hardly credit even my own memories, but I know that most of what is written could not be true. There were no storms blowing up out of nowhere, or fires on the eastern mountains, nor did trumpets sound in the under-land at the gates of the dead. No one had any visions about me, or foresaw any future for me, and no signs appeared in the sky.
As far as I was ever able to learn, the evening of my birth was balmy, the spring planting having begun on my father’s farm when in the afternoon my mother Sybil felt birthing pains begin. She took to her bed and her mother, Fysyyn, helped with the delivery. This was a few days after Vithilonyi in the three hundred ninth year of the reign of Queen Athryn Ardfalla XXXIV. That evening my father, Kinth son of Daegerle, got supper for himself and my soon-to-be siblings. Fysyyn warned Mother that I looked to be headed for a hard time right from the start. Sybil lost a lot of blood but after a short intense labor gave birth to a healthy infant. Grandmother cleaned her up and changing her bedding and Mother held me and fell asleep.
I was born near enough to midwatch to make the event somewhat remarkable; the village scrivener argued over which day to write on my birth record. I was my mother’s seventh child and her last; her fourth child by my father Kinth. One other of Kinth’s children was born dead. This fulfilled a minor prophecy, since a fortuneteller had foretold she would bear seven living children, the last a sturdy boy who would be first to leave her. She named me Jessex, after my father’s uncle.
My grandmother was Fysyyn, a Wise Woman of the Aerenoth Clan who got children from the famous hunter Veneth but never married him. This is a notable fact, for the Queen’s magistrate hanged Veneth when he refused to obey the ban on entering Arthen Wood, and the lack of wedding beads was what saved Fysyyn from a similar fate. My mother was only a girl when her father died and she grieved him all her life. After his death, Fysyyn moved with her two children to Mikinoos, a village on the Chali Road north of the Forest. She had enough gold to buy a house and raised her children there, renting rooms to travelers. Mama told pleasant stories of the boarding house but Grandmother hardly ever spoke about it. Those years were marred by the disappearance of her son, Sivisal, again into Arthen, where many folks had vanished in bygone days, if stories were true. He went out hunting and never returned. His abrupt departure shocked my mother and she retreated into silence that lasted for years. Until one day she met my father in the Mykinoos market.
