The Seven Votes, Itemised

Last chapter ended with three votes and no helm. This one is brief, because the Fremennik turned out to be easier to persuade than a mural.

The Bard's vote cost him a lyre. He cut the branch from a tree that hums to itself, made Lalli a soup out of a stone and three vegetables, and got paid in golden fleece. That should never work, and in Rellekka it does. Twice he could not climb to the Seers' spinning wheel. On the third try he spun the fleece. Fossegrimen asked for a raw shark at her shrine, and his own crew could not spare one, so the Chronicler took a shark from his own vault and was not pleased about it. Then he sang his own epic on the longhall stage. Nobody threw anything. That counted as a vote.

The Merchant's vote was a chain of thirteen errands. Partway along, the longhall barkeep said of Manni the Reveller: "Knowing the little runt as I do though, he'll probably do it for the cash." Manni then would not speak to him at all. He traded his way round half the town anyway, and Sigmund got his flower.

The Seer's vote is where the hour went. Peer's spell sent everything he wore to the bank, and the Chronicler stood in a stranger's house with nothing on but his dignity. He answered the riddle on the door: LIFE. He cooked a red herring to make red paint. Then he walked down to the mural with his red disks, and the mural would not take them. He went back three times. He fell asleep and woke up three times. Twelve minutes of a grown man arguing with a wall. In the end he went in from the back room and the wall gave way at once. After that it was a bucket, a jug, a drain, four-fifths of a bucket on a scale, and a vase frozen around a key. He poured a perfectly good jug of water down a drain because a puzzle told him to. That is the Seer's vote.

The Warrior's vote meant fighting Koschei the Deathless bare-handed, to the end. It took three minutes. The Book does not say whose end it was, but the vote was given.

Chieftain Brundt welcomed him at 06:39. He collected his armour from the bank, all eight pieces, and bought a Berserker helm from Skulgrimen, who sells them to no outerlander. He is no longer an outerlander. He was given ten hours and used one. The other nine he leaves to the mural, which may need them.

He signs this chapter Fremennik of the Berserker Helm. Once. The helm does the talking now.