Legends of Belariath
Corbin`Adal
Corbin Adal wasn't known by such a name during childhood. Children had simpler names in childhood for the nature of the desert and how it could kill so swiftly. A third of most generations died on the sand from simple things like falling or the sting of the small brown scorpion. Children were called by the names of natural things and when he was young, the boy's name was Dust. From it, all things come and return. There was a poetry in it and the young cleric knew it for as long as childhood endured. The tribe was one of slow travel and gentle means, unlike the warriors who preceded them or would follow them in travel. They were a mendicant lot, and meant to do little more than heal and well-keep the wounded that they would find in their travels to make well again for joining the rear guard.
When he was older, within sight of his Rite of Passage, Dust stood near the fire and watched raptly an event that he'd never seen before. A Sheyka contingent had come to treat with their tribe and to exchange the news that they'd heard. A dance followed around the fire of his people and theirs, and a joining afterward. He'd never witnessed sex before, visibly or not. And the cries and shuddering seemed to him to be so utterly human that he became entranced by it. It was the most natural show of affection and of reverence to a natural world, and that suited his Order very, very well.
The Order was comprised of a dozen men in the tribe, who had received their training at the hands of a visiting collection of elves who had brought the knowledge of Gaea to them. Tempered by the desert's wild nature and unforgiving edge, the Order was known for its ways of understanding people and of challenge. All life was challenge, and a member could never back down when a challenge of their will or endurance was laid down. His father was a member and so too was he, or he would be when the Rite of Passage was done.
The Rite was something that he would never forget, nor any of the men who had seen it. The beginning was simple, the young cleric raising his voice and crying out to his ancestors to bear witness to his ascent, and to the way that he would walk among then for a short time. A small brewed cup was given him, herbs and spices meant to detach him from himself but to also amplify his senses. To make him feel more than he should have. Desert alchemy was the way of it, and he suffered under it when they set the hooks into his back and lifted him to the large stone pillar to hang there in the sun for a time. To bleed and to sweat, to burn and to feel his lips crack in the dryness while he had visions of things that he didn't quite understand.
He dreamed of green places and of water. Of all of the places that Gaea created and yet she was not there. No one spoke of her, not of her name or her creation. Not of the way that she had wrought the world and the soul. When Dust woke, he felt the faint tugs of the razor-thin wire being passed through his abdomen and etching him with the glyphs of his ancestry and of his name. Of a name indicating a steep hill, a thing to be climbed. A challenge in his very name. He had come from Dust, and was Corbin. And someday, to Dust he would return. But not soon.
The young cleric, a man founded, took to the roads with the next passing caravan to find the greener place, and to bring to it a Gaean word and peace.