Servants and Followers (The Legends of Arria, Volume 2) (12 page)

Aid? Was this aid? Basha wanted to ask. Fato
did, indeed, seem to be calmer than he was before. Probably because
he was just frightened of the fight.

“
Why does Fato always miss
the fights?” Oaka whispered to Basha.

Basha felt like throwing up; he did indeed
swallow back some vomit.

“
Do you vouch for these
boys, falcon?” The major asked as he frowned.

“
I do indeed vouch for
these boys. They have good character, even the cowardly one.” Fato
said with a smirk. Yet he still seemed uneasy as well.

Oaka grimaced as Basha shuddered, and then
Monika said, “All right, they were helpful when I needed them, but
why didn’t you come in?” She asked the major.

“
We had the medium here try
to observe the proceedings, but he couldn’t get a clear picture!”
The major remarked.

“
It was too blurry,
something was interfering,” The ‘medium’, a thin man who could
barely fit in his large uniform, remarked. “We had too many people
involved here, not just you three and the smugglers, but also the
others,” He hesitated. “And then there was something else very
disturbing that showed up near the end of your fight.”

“
What others?” Basha asked
desperately.

“
The smugglers were
bringing in human cargo.” The medium started to say.

Basha fainted at this point.

“
The
tiger
,
I felt him, if only for a brief moment,” Doomba hissed,
turning to one of his
Ghoulmen
lieutenants.

“
The tiger?”
The
Ghoulman
asked, curious.

“
He is here, alive,
awake, whatever you might call it,” Doomba said, turning away from
the
Ghoulman
to stare off into the distance, the shadows
wreathing about his neck. “The tiger is stirring, stirring with an
intensity that could sweep away kingdoms, young and fierce. It only
lasted a brief moment before it faded, subdued again into whatever
subconscious contains it,” Doomba said, frowning to himself as the
shadow wreath coiled tighter. “Yet I can just sense him out of my
sight and out of my reach as well. I cannot control it.”

“
Calm down, sire,”
The
Ghoulman
lieutenant said, bowing his head in a snipeish
manner.

“
He is here, the
impression of his presence still lingers on in my mind, yet I
cannot control or fathom it.” Doomba said, ignoring the
lieutenant’s protestation. “There is just no clear distinction
between him and the mass of huddled people out there in the world,
yet just the mere hint of his presence drives me mad. It is too
much for me.”

“
Calm down,
sire,
we
will find him.” The
Ghoulman
said.

“
Search for him
then!” Doomba cried, turning upon the lieutenant. “Search far and
wide, never give up until you have found him
.
I, too, shall never
give up until I know he is dead, dead enough not to harm
me.”

“
Harm you?”
The Ghoulman
asked, his ears
,
or what one could call his ears, narrow slits as
they were alongside his head
,
pricking up.

“
Never mind that!”
Doomba cried, pushing back against the lieutenant with the force of
his power. “He cannot harm me anymore than I shall allow him.”
Doomba said, nodding as the
Ghoulman
lieutenant cowered in the
corner. “No mortal wound shall strike me down, I will rise up
again. The tiger is stirring, and we must find him!” He
insisted.

The lieutenant nodded and left him,
skittering off, perhaps to pass on the order to his fellow
lieutenants and subordinates, or to cower elsewhere. It made no
difference in the end. Doomba slumped back into his throne. He had
waited for so many years, not just for the tiger but for other
things as well, that he had forgotten how to stand and move
properly. His body rotted from the inside out, what rotten luck,
and so he could not budge far from his chair with very little
physical strength. He was stuck here. The tiger was familiar to him
now, and Doomba desired to stand, and march out to stalk his
ultimate opponent, but it was only his inability to do much more
than sit, wait, and watch for the tiger that stopped him.

Yet he still had his power, which was
able to sustain him and his network of shadows for all these years,
that was some good news.

His senses stretched out across
Salarria, although he could not single out an individual for very
long with such a wide range, and some areas seemed to be blocked
out entirely. He gathered as much intelligence as he could about
these blocked-off areas from his Servants and Followers who were
able to slip in and out of these areas unnoticed, although
sometimes they weren’t heard from again.

He was disturbed by these
disappearances and absences occasionally, wondering if there was
something taking place in those blocked-off areas that he was
missing, perhaps the tiger. But then again, these areas were so far
away from him that whatever was taking place there could not
possibly reach him, or at least not yet, especially when there were
so many Followers and Servants between him and there, ready to
shield him if necessary. Perhaps one or two or three Servants and
Followers going missing was nothing to worry about at the moment,
especially when they were taking such enormous risks, and it should
be expected that there would be losses, but eventually the tiger
would arise from his hiding place to strike at Doomba, and he had
to be ready to face this foe.

His Servants and Followers were very
loyal to him, or as loyal as they could be when he sometimes used
them to sustain himself. He promised them immortality, a chance at
something more than themselves, and an opportunity to gain power.
He also promised that he would spare their miserable little lives
from his wrath and torment once he had gained enough power to
control everything.

He gave them very little of what he
promised them during their lifetimes, though, as they often had
such short life-spans, and he often could sleep away 20 years in
the blink of an eye. He also didn’t trust them sometimes,
especially the humans, as they did have the habit of trying to grab
too much power for themselves, and occasionally would try to break
out of his control.

Thus, he trusted very few of them with
knowledge of the tiger’s existence, what the creature could do to
him, as he doubted that they would stay with him then. He gave them
only enough knowledge to try and track the tiger down, with dim
scents and the estimations of locations he provided from his own
fuzzy knowledge. He promised them great reward for the capture of
the tiger and ordered that they should bring any suspected tiger to
Coe Doomba so that he could determine whether or not it was the
real tiger in person.

However, it never was the real tiger.
Despite these limitations, at least he could now sense the real
tiger approaching, and he would be ready for it.

As the Ghoulman wandered off to relay its
orders, it passed by a Trolla talking to its friends. “I don’t
understand it. I left the pickaxe on the ground, right by my feet.
Next thing I know, it’s gone. Impossible to figure out who stole
it.”

“
It’s not that impossible,
it’s probably one of the animals stealing it.” One of its friends
remarked. “Have you checked them out?”

“
I already have.” The
Trolla said. “It didn’t work, none of them will confess to any
crime. And the pickaxe was stolen right out from under me. Who
could have done such a thing without being noticed?”

Chapter 5: In Between

The boy, he is lost and he is alone,
he

Does not know where to go. To whom

Does he turn to in his hour of need?
What

Spell or god can protect him in his
hour of darkness?

--
Proverb of
Manhood
, Urso

As had
become her habit, Habala
snuck into her sons’ bedroom and picked out Basha’s copy
of
Legends of
Arria
, from which she
read:

The Ocean Myth

From the fissures of Day’s and Night’s
union, however, an egg had been dropped, and that egg contained
three sons and a daughter. Day and Night had not been male or
female, nor were their children completely fixed as such when their
genders could be changed. But three sons and a daughter had been
born because their genders had been fixed in the minds of the
people who heard the story, and in the minds of their children
afterward who were born and heard the story from them.

The three sons were Popo, Loqwa, and
Menthar, born in that order, while the daughter was Mila, who was
either the oldest or the youngest, depending on what you believed.
Popo, Loqwa, Menthar and Mila fell into the ocean from the sky
while Day and Night mated. However, the children could not breathe
underwater, because they were born in the sky and breathed air,
while they could not swim because they had not learned how and it
was unnatural to them. And so they sank, drowning underwater; Day
and Night were unaware of what was happening below them, with the
children that were born, distracted and absorbed with their own
mating. The world did not exist for them yet, and they had no
knowledge of the consequences of their actions yet as the light was
not bright enough yet to illuminate everything.

Meanwhile, the
children of Day and Night reacted differently to drowning,
depending on what they thought. Popo thundered with anger and fear.
He was certain that he was the oldest, and certain that he was
drowning, when he could not breathe and there was water all around
him. That made him angry; he was set against dying on principle,
because he knew that he would have to live to lead the others.
There was no one else besides him who could be the leader, as far
as he was aware of, and he knew that he would set a bad example for
his siblings, who were the only other beings that existed as far as
he knew, by dying before he got the chance to live. That made him
afraid when he didn’t know what else to do in this situation
except
drown. He thundered because it was
in his power to do so, but it made no noise below water and was
useless otherwise.

Menthar burned with
lightning and hatred. Lightning was his power, and he used it
because he did not want to waste it
. H
e had been given fire, and he
would burn it for as long as he was able, while it was in his
possession, because it belonged to him. He burned with fire from
the sky, fire from the sun that he was a part of, and he belonged
in the sky
,
blazing alongside the sun, because they were
twins.

Menthar knew that he
did not belong in the water. He hated being in the water. Being
quenched from burning more than he could if he had been in the sky,
and drowning in the water that robbed him of air he needed to
breathe
,
and stoke the fire deep inside
. H
e hated dying. He hated dying,
and he hated the water
.
H
e wanted to live and burn, to rage
against dying. Of course, that didn’t mean he could do anything
about dying; though he burned, there was too much water, and he
kept getting snuffed out every time he tried to burn so that only
smoke came out.

While Menthar and Popo both sank at an
equal rate together at the same level, being useless about doing
anything other than struggling and fuming needlessly at their
drowning, their other two siblings were different. Loqwa sank
faster than the others because he was actually trying to sink down
faster, diving in a way that he was pointed straight down at the
bottom and tried to move towards it, not looking up at the sun.

Loqwa did not want
the sun that had dropped them. He felt abandoned by his mother and
father, whoever they were, and he wanted to drown and die because
there was too much effort in struggling against the water and
death. There was too much going against him in trying to reach for
something higher like life and the sky when there was calmness and
serenity in the depths, if he surrendered. He was tired of his
older siblings’ bombast and their games to survive already when
they were only prolonging the inevitable, and he wanted to embrace
the nothingness that existed in death rather than wait. Besides,
Loqwa was half certain that there was something
,
down deep below the
surface of the water, he could feel it
,
that was beyond
explanation, and beyond life. That had to be
explored
,
and he wanted to go beyond death...

Mila, however,
struggled towards the surface and the light. She saw it, perhaps
even more than her siblings did, her brothers, because she was
looking up while the others were interested in looking down
(Loqwa), or at each other (Popo), or at themselves (Menthar). She
was reaching out, and branching out, towards the sun. She felt the
warmth of the sun and of the surface, even through the water, and
thought that she wanted life from the sun. She wanted to be
comforted by the sun, who was her mother, and to be met with the
sky, who was her father. She wanted to breathe again, and to be
free of water, because she remembered, deep inside, that there was
more than water
;
there was sky.