In the City of Fish, in an age long gone, there was once a steep and narrow road they called Wheat Street. About a hundred or so paces up the hill from the corner where Wheat Street came down to the river and met North Bank Road, there was a small temple of the Way of the Harmonic Path and in the temple there lived three priestesses from the Harmonic Order. The oldest was called Jodyth, the middle one was called Gemulae and the youngest was called Hella and they were all charged with the making of the divine music that keeps the soul on the path to glory.

Jodyth

Gemulae

Hella

Hella was the first to wake on a sunny morning in the month of Doloph and after a quick wash and a hasty breakfast of no more than two mouthfuls of oats and a splash of milk, she left to fetch water for the temple. In her left hand she carried a large wooden bucket, whilst her right arm held on to a loop of rope wound over her shoulder and tied to the handle of a second slightly smaller bucket which bounced against her hip as she hurried down the hill. On North Bank Road there was already a queue walking upstream towards the Fish Lord's Pier and Hella saw with a sinking feeling that Zane Pilder the fat old baker who had a shop in Crossgate Street was just ahead of her.

"Some men who attend our musical meditations are not here with their spiritual welfare in mind," Jodyth had warned Hella, somewhat tartly, after a difficult lunchtime performance when the complexity of the flute part she was playing had been compounded by an acute consciousness of the baker's undisguised gaze which had remained fixated on her throughout the service, making her blush and miss a few notes. Jodyth had clearly been irritated. "We are here to guide our congregation in the contemplative virtues of the Way of the Harmonic Path," the intimidating senior priestess continued, "this is not some house of fleshly pleasure!"

"It's hardly my fault is it?" Hella complained afterwards to Gemulae, who had seemed to find it all highly amusing. "He's old enough to be my father and I haven't done anything to encourage him."

"Perhaps you should then," Gemulae teased a little unkindly. "Zane Pilder would be a good catch - a fine upstanding city husband for a girl from Earthengrew wouldn't be bad eh?"

She had rolled her eyes and winked to show she was joking but Hella wasn't happy. In truth she was getting a bit tired of Gemulae's frequent references to her Earthengrew origins and accent, making her out to be a simple country bumpkin. Earthengrew was no metropolis but Hella did feel a little indignant at the (half joking) implication her home town was some kind of primitive outpost in the back of beyond. It wasn't. Earthengrew was a perfectly respectable small market town and not even that far from Nephatar. Sometimes she missed the little whitewashed hall on the hill where she'd been raised as an orphan by the priestesses in the local temple. She hoped they were faring well but in these hard days it was difficult for everyone. It had been for the best to take this chance of a move into the city when she came of age.

Zane Pilder had seen her approaching but Hella had no intention of providing the lecherous old baker with anything more than basic common courtesies so she returned his exaggerated bow with the most utilitarian of smiles, eager to get her errand concluded as quickly as possible so that she could get back to the temple. Within three minutes walk, a small queue had begun to build. It shuffled along without entirely stopping but to avoid getting into any kind of conversation, the priestess turned her head to gaze out over the waterway.

At low tide, the Nepha River looked unusually barren. The river's salinity varied with the ocean tides, reaching far inland and past the western wall of the city. To access relatively fresh water that could be easily purified by a common hedge mage, one had to draw it from the river where it was least affected by seawater and pollution. The Fish Lord's Pier served this purpose, extending from North Bank Road to the central channel where the main freshwater stream ran. The city provided a public service of pulleys and gears that facilitated the water collection, as long as people brought their own buckets and ropes.

"Leave some for the rest of us," some wit in the queue cried out to general laughter, as a fat man, his wife and two teenage children headed back into the city, all laden with water containers of various kinds which they were struggling to carry without spilling. Hella smiled too, but when she finally got a place to secure her own rope and buckets and looked over the edge of the pier she was shocked. How low the river was! She'd never really given it a thought before today but what if the river did run dry?

Ever since she was a little girl, people had been telling Hella that something was wrong with the sun. "It's too hot," they said. "It wasn't always like this. There's not enough rain." Even though she knew the priestesses saved something extra for her when they could possibly spare it, she had often been hungry as a child - the anxiety in Earthengrew at the start of each growing season, the desperation at harvest time and the fact that there rarely seemed to be enough to eat - well that was just normal wasn't it? It had always been like that for as long as she could remember and had there really ever been a time when it was different? Hella wasn't sure, but she knew that there used to be two reservoirs in the hills north of the city and previously reliable wells to the west which now delivered no more than a trickle. There had certainly been better times here in the city before the citizens had to get their water from the Fish Lord's Pier. Now seeing the river like this, she started to wonder whether there was even worse to come...

She had to queue again for a white haired old mage with a pitch just across the road who desalinated her two buckets, complaining as usual about how it wasn't the easy magic ignorant people thought. He took her coin and handed her a dry packet of the previously dissolved salt which she pocketed as she picked up the clean water. Then he announced to the world that he'd done enough for the morning and needed his rest. The disappointed people behind her grumbled loudly but they had no option now other than to find another mage, willing to do the work elsewhere in the city. There were only a few who had the skills and they were always in demand.

By the time Hella got back home the sun was already hot, although it was still early. She carefully emptied one bucket into the communal barrel in the refectory, making sure no drop was spilled as it refreshed the worryingly small existing supply. The barrel would have to last for the three of them until tomorrow's low tide and that included cooking, washing and drinking. The other bucket was for watering the plants in the tiny high walled vegetable patch behind the northern apse. They were in sore need of it, but a decent crop of tomatoes was ripening on the vines and promised some welcome variety in the priestesses' frugal meals within the next day or so. The twin rows of potatoes and peas weren't as far advanced, but Hella was doing all she could to nurture them. It was hard to get fresh fruit and vegetables from the market these days and with a recent influx of refugees there was much talk that rationing would soon have to be introduced. At least supplies of fish were still plentiful and that was one reason why the city attracted the hungry and lost who had abandoned their homes in the increasingly barren interior of the continent.

It was peaceful in the vaulting spaces of the empty temple, when Hella let herself back into the main building. Jodyth had locked herself into the tiny chapel above the stage where she often liked to pray in private before beginning her public duties. Gemulae was still at the market and if she wasn't still haggling for bread, milk and fish she was probably flirting with the blacksmith's son who helped his uncle in the ironmonger's store on Veldays and Nimdays. It was incredible how many curtain rings and hooks suddenly needed replacing or repairing, and seemingly one at a time if each one meant another visit to the shop. So Hella had the place to herself, apart from a pair of silverfinches twittering in the rafters. They flitted in and out of a golden gap in the roof where the early morning sunlight shone through and brought life to the faded red and green colours of the peeling fresco on the western wall.

The roof ought to be repaired and the fresco ought to be repainted, but the temple was far from rich. "If the rain comes though the roof we'll be glad enough to get it," Jodyth had observed, and that was true enough.

Nephatar : The Wheat Street Harmonic Temple

Silverfinches

The Chapel of Tones was a small rehearsal room on the side of the temple, built with carefully structured acoustics. The heavy wooden door was half way along the western wall and it creaked softly when Hella opened it, revealing a shaded interior bathed in the indirect light coming from two high lattice windows. Along the northern wall, there was a portrait of Lynodyth, the founder of the Way of the Harmonic Path. Three handsome but worn wooden chairs, a small table with a stone and brass metronome and a bench against the southern wall completed the furnishing.

The Fey Lynodyth

From a fold inside her robe, Hella carefully removed a silver flute that had been gifted to her by the sisters at Earthengrew. It was her most prized possession, not only because of the nostalgic ties to her home town but because it provided her with the means to fulfil her spiritual duties, music she loved to play as well as the more quotidian refrains that gave structure to the temple rituals. There was a complex piece she was working on and her mind was almost fully absorbed in the difficult fingering when a faint knocking distracted her and she set the instrument aside.

The main entrance to the temple was barred from the inside and wouldn't normally be opened until a quarter to the tenth bell to admit worshippers for the morning service. Since it was only a little after the eighth bell it was still too early for that. The priestesses had their own keys to private doors to the refectory and gardens, accessed via a narrow alley between the neighbouring buildings on Wheat Street which was how Hella had come and gone this morning and how she expected Gemulae would as well, so who could this be?

Peering through the grill in the great wooden doorframe, Hella saw the small figure of an old woman wearing a black headscarf and shawl. She guessed it was one of those refugees from hunger in the continent's interior, perhaps a widow by her dress, but at any rate no one she recognised. There were so many like her these days.

The Widow

"You are too early for the morning worship," Hella told her.

"Then can I sit and wait inside?" the woman asked. "It is so hot out here and I am so thirsty! I will be no trouble."

Hella paused for an instant. Jodyth was very strict about only allowing members of the laity into the temple for official worship and she almost certainly wouldn't be happy if the widow was admitted now, but the young priestess could see how downcast and needy the old woman was and she didn't hesitate for long.

"Please sit here," Hella said, indicating a bench by the west wall as she closed and barred the main doorway again. "I'll fetch you a cup of water."

No sooner had she returned with the promised drink than Gemulae came whistling into the temple and at almost the same moment the door to Jodyth's sanctum opened.

"Remember, Little Laque Quay at the fifteenth bell, and don't be late!" a voice neither of them had heard before was saying. "The tide and ships won't wait and we need your best efforts for this!"

For once Gemulae was silenced and instinctively the two young priestesses bowed their heads as they recognised the robes of the City Harmoniser, their spiritual leader in Nephatar  and only one step below the Grand Harmonizer  herself. Jodyth followed the man out into the temple, looking flustered and obviously so distracted she didn't think to complain about the presence of the widow.

"We have a commission from the Fisher King," the senior priestess explained to her two juniors once the City Harmoniser had left. "All the temples in the city do. We're just a part of it. Today's public services will have to be cancelled. We need to learn some new music and we don't have much time!"