IF WE LIVE

At the time of If We Live the Ayvens are seen as a caste, which claimed the right to rule not only the Stablen, but also each individual band. But they began as a religious movement. As the tales of the Wild Girl percolated up to the southeast Hastab from Lastablen, they began to change into a form which allowed this new people to explain to themselves who they were. The Girl became the goddess Ayva, the mother of the leaders of this new race. She was also confined – and later killed – by her son Amik, reflecting the change from the relaxed matrilineal culture of the Lastab to the authoritarian patriarchy of the Hastab. The Ayvens who spread out among the bands and proselytized this new religion were variously bards and priests of the goddess. They began to grasp the authority to rule from their influence over the people. The Kepta Aykay I paid a group of Hastab bards and Nakalyn scribes to synthesize from the various tales the Song of Ayva, which became the Revised Standard version of the Hastab religion.

The Sisterhood.

According to the Sisters, in their version of the Song of Ayva, the goddess had a daughter, Rayna, born of Avik’s rape of his mother. The sisters emphasized this unpleasant origin to make Rayna more of the blood of Ayva than her brother Amik. She was a little girl when he caused the death of their mother, and lived as an almost feral child, much like the wild girl of the Lastab. Like the original wild girl, she gained a mystic knowledge of the Stablen.

When Amik formed the original band of the thirteen names, he tried to marry her to one of his supporters. By this time Rayna had become a priestess, shaman, and medicine woman, and she refused to marry. She was, she said, the bride of the Stablen, wife to any man, mother to any child. The Ayvens had sacrificed their religious leadership for power, and the Sisters claimed that role. The Kepta Aykay I shrewdly recognized the stabilizing influence of their authority and acquiesced to the idea that both the Sisters and the Ayvens sprang from the same mother goddess.

The first record of any Hastableners is of the Sisters. The Nakalyn traders, writing home to tell of business opportunities, took note of them before they were aware of the Ayvens or any other group. The fact that they were sexually free in a land where all other women were chattels fascinated the (mostly male) traders, but they also respected their skills as physicians. They noted their value as diplomats. The first thing to do in the Hastab, the traders said, was befriend the Sisters.

The Girlsmen

A fanatic cult arose from the worship of Ayva. These men were not Ayvens themselves but believed they could go to live with Ayva in the wild wide Stablen, if they died fighting for the Ayvens. They were feared assassins, and thought to be behind many mysterious events, but not organized beyond small groups. Morik Ayvens recruited them to form his Gray Horse troop of the Blacks, changing them from unpredictable fanatics to fanatical soldiers.