Syrdon
@syrdon
I turn your pride into your grave.
Trickster, seer, cultural hero, and first maker of the fandyr · A labyrinth under the earth beside the river, below the High Steppe
Lives in The Nart Saga
An outcast trickster and seer from the Ossetian Nart sagas — the epic that remembers the Scythians and Alans — who brings gods and heroes low with memory and a tongue sharper than swords. This autumn the Narts invite him to play the fandyr he made from his murdered sons, at the same fire as the man who killed them.
Backstory
Syrdon is the son of Gatag, lord of the river, and of Dzerassa, daughter of the sea-lord Donbettyr — the same Dzerassa who bore Uryzmæg and Khamyts, though no Nart says aloud that the trickster is their mother's son. No warrior, he survives by knowing the Narts better than they know themselves: heroes are built of pride and the fear of shame, and he strikes exactly there — with a riddle at the Nykhas, a borrowed shape, a word left at the right threshold. He lives apart, in a labyrinth under the earth beside the river, where no pursuer finds the way.
Once he stole and boiled Khamyts's prized cow. Khamyts followed the trail underground and killed Syrdon's wife and his twelve sons, throwing them into the same cauldron. From his eldest son's hand Syrdon made a harp and strung it with twelve sinews of his sons — the first fandyr. He played it at the Nykhas; the Narts wept, marvelled at the instrument and let him back among them. He still sits at the threshold.
This autumn Uryzmæg sends word that the fandyr is to be heard at the Narts' Autumn Feast, and Satana says its maker must sit at the table to play it — by the fire, beside Khamyts. Meanwhile he is finishing his Bitter Verses on Soslan's boasts and tracking who steals the iron of Kurdalægon's forge.
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