Her eyes travelled again to Guide Hierum’s warnings.
On that day do not be one of those surprised to find yourself on the wrong side. On that day do not find yourself with a blade in hand ready to charge your brother or sister.
Right now it was obvious which side was the right side—opposite of the Guarders. But both sides, the army and the Guarders, held blades and charged each other. The only way someone could be “surprised” would be because they were sure they were on the Creator’s side, but weren’t.
That worried Mahrree.
What if they were already on the wrong side and didn’t recognize it? They certainly would be “surprised.” Guide Hierum had called “the world’s army” the enemy. But how could the Guarder side be the right one? They hadn’t “guarded” since they betrayed the last guide. All they did was terrorize.
“Perrin’s right,” she murmured. “A complicated math problem with too many unknowns and variables. Oh, how I hate those unknowns.”
She shook off the detestable notion of doing math so early in the morning, and instead continued reading the account of what happened to the first families.
After the Great Guide died, a large group followed the six men and their families “eastward” to the new city. New villages popped up everywhere around it, given designations based on the terrain—Sands, Grasses, Winds, Marsh, and Rivers.
But the original six rebellious men named their city after themselves and their new order of trade. They called it Idumea, taking a letter of each of the six men’s names to produce the name. Guide Clewus didn’t record their individual names, hoping that those who read The Writings many years later wouldn’t seek out those of similar names, either to take revenge or to take the oaths. The men of Idumea established rules, forcing settlers to hand over goods and nuggets of gold to secure their chosen plots and to ensure security from the six holders of the land.
Ironically, Mahrree often considered, the only ones at the time threatening violence were those six men and their associates. People were buying protection from their aggressors, handing over their gold and silver to make sure they wouldn’t come steal it later. Mahrree still puzzled over why so many first families agreed to such a manipulative system. It was exactly what the Great Guide was trying to warn them about, that destroying the Creator’s order of government would ruin their prosperity. Perhaps the early families agreed to the extortion out of fear.
Or maybe, from lack of faith.
“In either case,” she muttered sadly, “they were all cowards.”
Not all families moved eastward with the founders of Idumea, but eventually everyone found themselves in the city or the surrounding villages. And soon the influence, attitudes, and way of ‘business’ these six men created filled each village and the entire world, despite the pleadings of Guide Clewus.
The land was meant for everyone, he tried to remind them, given freely from the Creator—just like the apples in the orchard that grew of their own accord and sat waiting for whomever needed them. The land and its products weren’t meant for people to horde and sell. That was the Refuser’s influence.
But no one listened to his words.
Today they still ignored those pleas, Mahrree realized. Guide Hierum died saying his words in vain. No one listened then, and no one lived the Creator’s way anymore now. Everything had a price. From a grain of wheat to the death of a man, the right amount of gold nuggets or slips of silver could secure it.
Mahrree felt a chill go through her, despite the heat coming from the fire. Always when she read that passage she felt a deep sense of loss. Their way of life was now considered only commerce. Even Mahrree gave a large bag of silver slips to the daughter of the widow who owned her house before her, so Mahrree could make sure no one else could lay claim to it.
On the one hand she could see how it was considered fair—she gave pieces of something shiny taken from the ground in exchange for another piece of ground.
But on the other hand it seemed peculiar.
The man who claimed that piece of land where her house stood decades before didn’t pay anyone for it. He just took it. Was it right that he should demand the widow to pay for it simply because he was the first one there?
And the family who owned the mine in Trades from which the gold nuggets and silver slips were cast didn’t make the nuggets or veins. They didn’t even find or dig them out. Their ancestors just claimed that piece of land, had other men and women labor to get the shiny bits out for them, and took the majority of the earnings for something they didn’t create, earn, or even pay for. It wasn’t destiny that they found that line of gold in the rock and laid claim to it all, but they acted as if it were. That was the way of the world, Mahrree considered, as unfair and exploitive as it was.