“They teach you about heroes.” The teacher dropped into story-telling cadence as she hopped onto her desk. “They tell you about Empresses. They tell you about scholars. But do they tell you…”

Her voice became a whisper, “about Dirvodirvan and the Sword of Fire?”

The class stared at her. The teacher smiled.

“Dirvodirvan was born to a goat-herder, back in the cold times when the world was hard. He was born in the winter, on the coldest night, he was born to a world so cold the midwife’s hands near froze to him.

“And from his cold birth came a man of fire.” The teacher dragged out fire as if she were savoring the word. “A man of iron, a man of blood.” She grinned at her students, and they shrank back in their seats. “A man who would break chains with his bare hands.”

“I heard he was a slave,” one student piped up, certain of himself.

“In that day, all the Calenyena were slaves.” The teacher’s answer was smooth and sure. “The Bitrani owned the land and the boats, the goats and the weapons, and doled them out only as they saw fit. They kept the wheat and the grain, too, so that all the Calenyena had to eat were river-grass and marsh-root, seeds and moss. They kept the Calenyena hungry and needy, so that they could not fight for the need to farm, could not ride for the need to eat their goats, could not sing for the need to breathe.”

She had leaned forward as she spoke, and so had they. She leaned back, now, grinning once again. “But Dirvodirvan broke the locks. Dirvodirvan set us free. Dirvodirvan, clever man.” She sat down on the edge of the desk and held her arms wide, “found food where there was none and steel where only stone had been, fed and armed the Calenyena using nothing but his wits.” She waited for a count of three. “He broke the first link, and warriors did the rest.”