Ri was what every parent would wish for in a child - brilliant, dedicated, honest, and above all quiet.
The mystery around his origins did not reveal itself. And so Archdruid Melgiana chose to take him along with her on her wanderings, as she could not neglect her duties. She did not treat him as her son, but closer to an apprentice, of whom she had previously taught five; and despite his youth Ri proved as quick of mind as any of them, which caused Melgiana to rejoice. Ri had chosen learning over love, and she would not refuse the boy that.
For a time they walked the roads of western Ysc, treading northwards as the spring spread. They lived off the land for most of the time, and off gifts of villagers that Melgiana sang ballads to and resolved the conflicts of. They were welcome, too, in the keeps of the great chiefs, both out of fearful respect and from genuine friendship.
"Our duties as judges," Melgiana spoke as she and Ri walked up the slope of the Trihorn, Melgiana leaning on her trihelical staff, "are the most common. That does not mean they are the most important to us; but to the people we advise, our words can change a life, and so we do well to be aware of their import."
Ri said nothing. That was good, sometimes, but at the moment Melgiana wished to know his thoughts, which so often were buried beneath a stoic mask. When she asked him, he paused before answering. "What could be more important?"
"The lore we keep," Melgiana said, "the philosophies we debate - those are older than any single human, older even than any of the tribes. So our duty to history is no less important than our duty to the people living today. And we have, also, a duty to all Avalon, to prevent the return of the Violet Sky, when the rifts blocked out the stars and men fell to the earth. For men lacked wisdom, in those days, and they despoiled the world; and so crops failed and rivers ran dry, and only on Ysc did the druids preserve anything of what had been."
"Did men cause the rifts, too?" Ri asked.
"That knowledge is lost," Melgiana said. It was a point of curiosity that Ri often demonstrated, as many children did, the very origins of all that was known. But the ballads said little of those days.
Ri accepted this as well, as was his way. He did not lack curiosity, but he understood, in that way that even few adults who were not druids did, that knowledge had limits, and that time erased all things. Some, upon understanding that, accepted it to drift among the eons; others stood defiant against the tide of years, and sought to build something that would last. Melgiana was of the first school, but Ri seemed nearer the second, as perhaps was fated.
At the pass, they were greeted by a pair of riders, who dismounted and bent low before her in recognition of her staff. They took so long to state their business that Melgiana rapped her staff on the ground. "What is it?" she asked.
"King Uruth welcomes you to his lands, Archdruid," one of them finally said, "and asks you to ride swiftly, for he needs assistance with a matter of dispute between his two greatest knights - "
"I do not ride," Melgiana said. "Of course I will aid King Uruth when I come to his keep, but that will be near a week from now."
The riders shared a look. "Can you not step to his castle in an instant?" one of them asked.
"Magic is not to be used lightly," Melgiana said. "If the knights are so impatient, let them come to Aorit and hear my judgment there."
That settled it, but when they left Ri's eyes were ever so slightly wider than normal, and he asked Melgiana to tell him of magic.
What was strangest was that she considered it. She did not think she ever would, not to one so young, but Ri had the talent, and more importantly, the temperament. The greatest risk of magic was of losing oneself to it, due to either carelessness or ambition; indeed, training it was more than anything training to constrain one's inner power, not to summon it. The greater the working, the more risk there was in it, the greater the cost to the world. All those were things that children rarely understood, but Ri, surely...
But no matter how quickly Ri grew, in both body and mind, in the end he was still too young, and she said so.
"I am not asking to be taught magic," he said in reply. "I am not sure I will ever want that. But surely, it does not hurt to know about it?"
"If only that were so," Melgiana said. The truth was, the line between knowledge of magic and knowledge about magic was a thin one, and in many places nonexistent.
They arrived at Aorit the next day, and indeed Uruth had sent word of his coming, the next afternoon. He greeted Melgiana warmly, and Melgiana did the same, remembering their friendship in years long past, when she had been an advisor to the then-young king's court.
The dispute itself, alas, was only about love, and silly at that. Raango and Gwyngat were arguing about the hand of a woman who had died a year earlier. It was, apparently, a matter of honor, a matter for which they had almost dragged the entire realm of Ritanspur into civil war. But they were willing enough to listen to Melgiana's urging to settle the matter with a mounted duel.
"Uruth," she said when the king objected, "I don't care how strong they are, it's better you be rid of one of them. Frankly, it's better you be rid of both. They're fools, and it is ill to have a fool sitting at a king's right hand."
Ri found the whole matter stupid, and unlike Melgiana, said so openly. What was more, he spoke about it with such conviction that the crowd around the jousting fields jeered the contenders more than anything. Gwyngat seemed to not care, but Raango was outraged, and Raango's moa, a large black-feathered beast, was provoked by that outrage.
It happened on the third pass, when Gwyngat's orange moa was already bleeding from several wounds, though the knight himself was unharmed. Raango's moa simply lowered its neck and went berserk, rushing into the crowd, indeed directly at Melgiana. Raango tried to stop it, but in the process his foot slipped in the stirrup.
Melgiana acted quickly, leaping up and leveling her staff. The moa ran into the bar, and despite its great mass, she stopped it in an instant, calling on her power to arrest its momentum. Raango was stopped as well, quickly falling off his mount, but he rolled over, picked up his blade, and ran back at Gwyngat. He almost won, too, but in the end Gwyngat's cold disdain carried the day.
The moa, for its part, raged for a few minutes, but then went off to devour some shrubbery. Sometimes, Melgiana was forced to conclude, animals were smarter than humans.
"It was pointless," Ri said afterwards.
"Yes, Ri," Melgiana noted, "you've pointed that out a dozen times already."
Ri took it as a reprimand and lowered his head. "The duel was good, though," he said. "The knights fought well. I'd like to..."
"Is that what you want to become, then?" Melgiana asked. "A knight?"
"I don't know," Ri admitted. "I was born for a great destiny, but I still do not know what it was."
