The Gramary

Introduction
Part I: The Amulet
The Game
The Fortress
Declesa
The Valley
The Test
The Homecoming
Thieves
The Guild
The Trade
The Plan
The Raid
The Prelate
The Commission
The Betrayal
Part II: The Name
The Wildmen
The Storm
The Chase
The Prisoner
The Execution
The Revolt
The Abbot
Fever
The Book
The Reunion
The Siege
The Conference
The Reckoning
The Aftermath

We call death the Nameless One.  

Names are the handles of power, Alessa said, and we have no power over death.  He was mostly right; but if death truly has no name, it can have no power over us -- and that it certainly has.  Death has a name; we just don't know it.

I would know the name of death if anyone did.  I have tried to learn its name for a hundred, a thousand lifetimes.  I have called it a thousand different things from my own thousand different names; never has it answered, never has it submitted.  When it called me -- a thousand times in turn -- I always answered, though not always right away.  I suppose I always will, because I have a name and death knows it.

But once I had no name.  Like death, I was called many things, and like death I was not bound or constrained by them.  Unlike death, I answered to some; but these held no power over me.  Power is like a road, and as Declesa said, "The road that goes north also goes south."  If these near-names held no power over me, they also conferred no power on me.  They did not constrain, neither did they define.  I was nameless, formless, powerless.  I have forgotten many of my lives and many of my names, but this time is bright in memory: when I was as nameless as death.

Kuhesos, where I was born, is a great shark of a city, a sleek grey predator, rough-skinned and smooth-muscled, always moving, always eating, pitiless, powerful, deadly.  And beautiful, as the effortless glide of a hunting shark is beautiful.

Landro, where I sought a meager living, is a remora in the shadow of Kuhesos, forever trapped by the proximity of that great place.  It needs the scraps that fall unnoticed from the City, yet pulls away, fearful of being swallowed.

People come to Landro only on their way to or from Kuhesos.  On the way to, they are hopeful, yearning for success, but timid -- or they would not stop first in Landro.  On the way from, they are beaten, crushed by the brutal City, yet still with some faint hope -- or they would not stop so close to the beast.

The Silver Otter is a third-rate tavern in this third-rate town, and does not attract the hopeful.  It is a defeated place, and caters to the failures.  The overlooked, the unwanted, the disinterested: these too are drawn to the tavern, seeking company for their misery as well as the reverse.  I was in the Silver Otter robbing a bos'n with dice.