HRT : Ilvir : Yffehn i Aguin

Introduction

We live in the hills, we die in the hills, but the hills are not our home. For we are the Yffehn i Aguin, the people with no land, the Dispossessed.

One cannot camp before the seat of God. One may go there with respect, with awe and reverence, and there he may stay, for a timeless time before the quiet is broken.

The Yffehn i Aguin are a group of Ilviran Jarin who live in the hills and wild places of southwestern Hârn. They shun the towns and villages of the states they inhabit, preferring their harder life as part of being free. For freedom underlies the identity of the Yffehn i Aguin; it is the justification for their way of life, for their very existence.

Their history is, like that of all Jarin, a story of loss, of hope betrayed - by fate, by their enemies, by themselves. The Jarin of Jara have lost their homeland, as their ancestors lost their home on the continent, and as the ancestors of those men and women lost their home in the snowy reaches of a now mythical land. For Jara is no more, will not be again, though those Jarin remaining in Ivinia succeed in their plots of revolution. For the Yffehn i Aguin know that what has once been lost is gone forever, and that the wise must then lead those less wise to a new place, to repeat the cycle of their history.

The Yffehn i Aguin have left their former homes, having seen them invaded, desecrated, destroyed. They have taken up their few belongings and moved on, west and south. And come, once more, to the sea; and where now are the shipbuilders who fashioned the boats that brought the Auinfehn to Ilvir's Isle? The craft of the Tualfehn has been tainted by the blood of the Unspeakers; what folly would it be to look there for such skill? When the time is right, the remnants of an ancient race will cross the sea and leave God's Home. That time has not yet come, and the Yffehn i Aguin remain landless, homeless; they are the Dispossessed.

We are the Yffehn i Aguin, the Dispossessed. Our homes lie in the past, many leagues and many years away. How long has it been since our music sounded, free and courageous in the wooden halls of Leriel? How much blood has thinned, without the snows on Tintuel to nourish it? Our ancestors look upon us with disgust, and turn away; where now is the power of my people? Travellers we have always been, and more than one homeland we have had to leave for others to inherit. But where we have been exiled before, so too we have been led to a new place. For the gods did not forsake us utterly for the crimes of our number. We have crossed the sea, and crossed mountains and fields of grass. Will there be any rest for my people, who travel still but have no leader?

We heard the words of Sheryle the prophet. We hear all that concerns us, wherever it is spoken. But her words were false. She is not Yffehn i Aguin, and may not speak for us. Rightly she did not seek us out; her thought can only be for the Craigh Naur, the Ones Who Forget. We have forgotten nothing - our history is as long as the suffering of the world, and every voice speaks of it in the wilderness, every song celebrates it in the darkness. When one of us dies, we bury him as we buried the sons of Magh Doach, in the earth that waits forever to receive us. What use have we for prophecies of peace among enemies, we who find peace enough in the cries of battle?

Here there is no cause for fighting. This land is not ours; we make use of it as guests, but as guests we must leave before the next dawn. Where now can we go, who have reached the western shore? Is there hope for return, to bring the past forward? Perhaps, for the ways of God are infinite, but we do not avoid the anguish of dying on foreign soil. We are the Yffehn i Aguin, and this name we shall keep for as many lifetimes as we held our home, until we find our way back.