Instead of a snippet today, a background legend from Paksworld.\u00a0\u00a0 The origins are far enough back that it’s not possible to be sure where it originated, and many versions exist.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No spoilers here.<\/p>\n
Torre’s Necklace<\/strong>. \u00a0 Once there was a foolish and self-indulgent king who believed the gods would serve his need, since he was also generous. \u00a0 The foolish king had a daughter less foolish than himself,\u00a0 a princess not beautiful but brave and prudent, who was also generous but not in the ruinous way of her father.\u00a0\u00a0 Her name was Torre. \u00a0 Year by year the foolish king\u00a0 borrowed gold from the neighboring kingdom, trusting its king’s indulgence, for that<\/em> king, with his eye on profit,\u00a0 reassured him and encouraged him to borrow more , until half the kingdom’s worth lay in the debt.<\/p>\n When the princess reached her full growth,\u00a0 she was not betrothed, for of those kings with sons, none wished to take on a kingdom half lost to debt.\u00a0 Except for one: the king who held those letters.\u00a0 He came, then, and demanded\u00a0 the kingdom and Torre besides,\u00a0 smiling a wolf’s smile as he stood in the hall of Torre’s father’s palace with his soldiers behind him.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Torre’s father begged and pled, to no avail, and Torre, watching, knew she could not let this thing happen, for she knew the neighboring kingdom to live in fear of this king, who treated his people badly.<\/p>\n So boldly she stood forth, and boldly she asked what that king would accept instead, and swore to perform any daring deed to ransom her father and her kingdom.\u00a0\u00a0 And the evil king laughed, but then bethought him that he could seem merciful at no risk to himself by setting her impossible tasks.\u00a0 This he did, twelve of them, and then demanded that they be all performed in so short a time that not even one could be done.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Torre’s heart sank, but she would not show despair before him, and she looked him in the eye and said “I accept.”\u00a0\u00a0 The wicked king knew she could not perform the deeds, and yet he had her locked in her chamber, just for that last measure of security.<\/p>\n In the dark of night, and despite the wicked king’s guards on her chamber, Torre escaped out her window and down the vines that climbed the palace.\u00a0\u00a0 She had with her little enough–the supper she had not eaten, her sturdiest clothes, and her determination.\u00a0 In the stable, where she expected to find her own horse, instead a strange horse stood in that stall, a horse as black as her own hair and eyes, and around its neck a string of lumps of coal.\u00a0\u00a0 Its eyes were bright as stars; its hooves shimmered, as if standing in a stream of running water and not on straw.\u00a0\u00a0 It bore no saddle or bridle, and when Torre would have fetched her own saddle, the horse was before her, blocking her from the tackroom.\u00a0\u00a0 So Torre, determined that death was better than giving up, dared to mount the strange horse and rode off into the night, and the wicked king’s anger, in the morning,\u00a0 came hard upon those he blamed for her escape.<\/p>\n The deeds demanded were every one difficult and dangerous, and though the black horse bore Torre from place to place more swiftly than any mortal horse, it was Torre herself who faced heat and cold, hunger and thirst, danger from man and beast and monster, storms of wind and storms of rain, to achieve them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Time passed, for her, and her skin bore the marks of sun and wind and time, the scars of injuries,\u00a0 and her hair, once night-black, was streaked with gray.\u00a0\u00a0 And one by one, as she accomplished them, the coals on the horse’s necklace turned to jewels, blazing with the light of all stars together.<\/p>\n When all was done, and the black horse wore a necklace of these jewels, she returned to her home, where only the days required by the evil king had passed.\u00a0\u00a0 The black horse bore her up to the palace, and the guards fell back, astonished: they did not recognize the rider.<\/p>\n In the hall, where the evil king stood gloating over her father,\u00a0 all eyes turned to the black horse and its jewels.\u00a0 Torre slid from its back, with the sack in which she had carried proof of her deeds.\u00a0\u00a0 Still none recognized her, for they had in mind the princess she had been, and not the woman she had become.\u00a0\u00a0 She walked forward, and held out the sack.\u00a0\u00a0 “Here is the debt paid,” she said, “with the treasures you swore would wipe it out.”<\/p>\n “Who are you, old woman, to talk to me of debts?” the wicked king asked.<\/p>\n “I am Torre,” she said, and her father, hearing her voice, knew her, but wept at what she had become.\u00a0 “Look, and see that the debt is paid in full.”\u00a0 And she opened the strings of the sack, and turned it upside down, so the treasures of the universe fell out and everyone there was astonished, for nothing\u00a0 so precious had been seen there before and gold itself appeared dull beside them.\u00a0 Here was a leaf of the One Tree, and a dragon’s scale, and all other things the evil king had demanded.<\/p>\n The evil king, astonished with the rest, was yet angry, and spurned the treasures with his booted foot, and said “If the debt be paid, you are still turned old and ugly and I have taken this king’s daughter.”\u00a0\u00a0 And here the stories diverge, for some say the wicked king fell dead at that moment, and some say it was when he reached to take the heart of a star, and some say he had his men gather the treasures and he left the hall safely with the treasures and did not die until much later.\u00a0\u00a0 But all say he was stricken, then or later, and left no sons.\u00a0\u00a0 In the same way, some say that Torre herself died that day, in her father’s arms, and then her body vanished, and some say she rode away on the black horse, no one knew where and maybe lived a long time in peace and maybe died soon. \u00a0 Nothing is known of her life after that, if indeed she lived beyond that day. \u00a0 Certain it is that her body was laid in no marked grave.<\/p>\n But all agree that the new constellation of stars appearing that night,\u00a0 a bright ring, is Torre’s Necklace, proof that the impossible is possible with the gods’ aid, and a lasting memorial of her courage.\u00a0 And all agree that Torre became the patron of young women in impossible situations,\u00a0 a friend of the poor and the enemy of those who are cruel and merciless.<\/p>\n Unlike the followers of Gird or Falk,\u00a0 Torre’s followers have no organization: there are no places of worship or recognition, no hierarchy of leaders, no regular gatherings.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She is mentioned in the rituals of Midsummer and (particularly) Midwinter in many places, but it is a mention only.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet she is recognized and loved, and a number of other tales about her exist across all Aarenis and the northern kingdoms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Instead of a snippet today, a background legend from Paksworld.\u00a0\u00a0 The origins are far enough back that it’s not possible to be sure where it originated, and many versions exist.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No spoilers here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[108,13,47],"class_list":["post-1110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","tag-background","tag-history","tag-religions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1110"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1120,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions\/1120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}