The Place
The Rootcellar Hills are a range of green hills honeycombed with root-cellars, a land that is less a hill than a pantry, and the pantry is the hills, and the hills are the oath. The hills stretch six kilometers from the black river to the white fields, and the six kilometers is the yard, and the yard is the day. The surface is soft underfoot, a green dark that gives and gives back, and the giving back is the first installment. The cellars are deep and honeycombed, chambers that run three meters down and lie in the soft earth, and the three meters is the depth of the oath, and the depth is the day. The sky above is a hard blue, the color of the hills when they are not green, and the light on the grass is thin and honest, the kind of light that does not flatter a face or a seam. It smells of wet grass and old grain, a smell that is the hills and is also the welcome, and the one sound is the ale, a soft murmur in the cellars that is the hills' only word, and the word is the day. There is no landmark the way a hill has a landmark, but there is one: the First Cellar, a hollow in the base of the tallest hill, the oldest cellar and the first oath, and the cellar is the door, and the door is the ale. What makes the Rootcellar Hills themselves is the keep: the oath is kept, and the keeping is the ale, and the ale is the treaty, and the treaty is the end.
How They Live
The Halflings keep this place in the keep, building their cellars in the hills, chambers of packed earth and root, lined with grain and hide, their entrances low, and a cellar is dug one root at a time, because a root is the season and a root is the calendar. Light comes from the fire, small and warm and kept low, because the fire is a location and the hill reads locations, and a fire that is not kept low is a fire that is a map. Food is the hill: the root, the grain, the small game, and the ale that keeps the oath honest, and the honest is the meal, and the meal is the kept. Water is drawn from the hill's springs, two black threads at the base of the First Cellar, which the oath-keepers tend the way you tend a promise, because the springs are the store and the store is the law. Heat comes from the fire, which is to say the fire does everything, and the fire is the reason the hills are green. The defense is the hill itself: a visitor who steps onto the hill is already in the debt's path, and the debt is the alarm, and the alarm is the welcome, and the welcome is the sentence. The day is measured by the ale, because the ale is the only clock the oath has, and the clock does not lie about the count. Every halfling that is born must drink once in the First Cellar before the hills will call it one of its own, and the drinking is the naming, and the naming is the only thing the earth ever gives back.
People
Home of the Halflings, whose holds are counted by cellar. Eleven cellars are kept at last count, and the count is kept in the ale, which is to say the count is as fixed as the oath, which is to say it does not lie. The oath-keepers lead, and rank is decided by the keeping, because a keeper who can keep an oath the hills have not kept is the keeper the ale trusts. Nothing that cannot keep a debt is welcome, and the debt is not needed, because the hills have a cellar, and the cellar has an oath, and the oath has a ledger. A surface traveler who once stood in the First Cellar, the last one to be let in, called it the only hill where the air makes you drink before you take a breath, which is the truest thing he said and the thing the ale paid the least attention to.
In Stories
The place where the oath is the only honest promise, and the promise is the ale, and the ale is the treaty, and the treaty is the end. The Forgotten have not been to the hills, but Uaellaen has read the ale once, at a distance, and the ale read him back, and the reading was the first thing he has ever paid for that he could not buy back.