Death's Deceit
With variations and mutations of the original tale aplenty, the tale of how a salabën slipped past the guards and into the realm of the dead using nothing but his wits and skill in brewing was a popular one among all the northern people.
"It was a thick, black brew, far removed from the familiar golden hues of the usual honeywine. Asta-Kara took a sip, then another, and soon enough had drank empty the cup. Death spread as icicles in his veins, a cold stiffness held back by the sweetness of honey."
Summary
The tale begins with the hero, a powerful an ambitious sage, who left home in order to find the mythical swan of the underworld swimming in deepest waters of the world beyond the realm of the dead, and listen to its song.
But the realm did not accept the living, and the brave sage Asta-Kara had no wish to die. So he decided to fool Death and slip into its realm past the black river coursing between the world of the living and that of the dead.
Asta-Kara looked for a way past the border and tried twice to reach the realm of the dead without success. The exact attempts differed in every variation of the story, but usually involved shapeshifting and swimming.
Finally, the third time Asta-Kara looked into the river. Its waters were calm, quiet and cold as the dead themselves. It was then he reached out and gathered a single pot of that water to drink. But he would not be able to drink it as it was—its grip would surely take a hold him and kill him.
So Asta-Kara took the water, honey and leaves of a young birch—recipes differ in exact composition—to make a brew out of, and created a mead which would make him invisible to Death's all-seeing gaze and allow him passage to the other side of that river.
He drank the brew and felt its touch, and knew he could now pass through the realm of the dead, and see the mythical white swan at the end of all the world's waters.
Once again he took himself to the edge of that black river and leaped into the waters. He had been right and could finally swim through the water and slip into the realm of the dead, all the while fooling Death as he had wished.
Asta-Kara walked and wandered the many paths of the realm of the dead, keeping well away from those who belonged. For three days he walked, so the story went, before he reached that place of myth and infinite beauty, those spring waters where the white swan sang its song alone.
He reached out to ask for a listen, and the swan turned its long, elegant neck to look at him. But its eyes could not be fooled by mortal wiles, and it alone knew Asta-Kara did not belong.
The swan screamed and its song turned to screeches as it awakened Death's realm to Asta-Kara's scheme. The sage, quick to action, leaped back into the river as all the forces of the white-veiled Death descended upon the place.
A tale of ambition and curiosity led by a hero with wit and will, the tale of Asta-Kara and his mead usually ended with him finding some way out of his predicament, before heading onward to new adventures. How exactly he got out the original story never stated, however newer tellers of the tale enjoyed adding their own guesses, many of which eventually became part of the stories themselves.
But more interested people were in the brew itself. A mead made from the water of the mythical black river, a brew strong enough to allow one to walk among the dead as if one of them, was a tempting concept for many an ambitious salabën. Attempts to recreate such a wine were plenty, though most fell apart from the moment they needed so much as a droplet of that black water witnessed only by the dreaming and the dead.
Comments