The Amber Legacy (48 page)
Authors: Tony Shillitoe
‘Get a torch,’ Button called.
‘Not that,’ Meg told Button. To Emma, she said, ‘He’s dead.’
Emma’s face saddened, and she felt for Meg’s hand. ‘I’m sorry for that.’
‘He would have killed you,’ Meg said, trying to ease the old woman’s guilt.
‘He did kill me,’ Emma said. ‘A long time ago.’
‘What do you mean?’
The old woman coughed and caught her breath. ‘There’s no time now for that. It was too long ago. But I have to speak to you. Alone.’
‘We can talk on the way back.’
Emma shook her head. ‘I’m not going back.’ She lifted her hands from her chest, and under the palms
blood oozed. Meg stared in shock, and carefully opened the old woman’s dress to reveal a knife wound. ‘I stopped Light’s magic,’ Emma said, with a grim smile, ‘but I didn’t expect his friend to stab me.’
‘I can heal it,’ Meg said, and put her hands across the wound, but Emma grabbed her wrist.
‘No, Meg. There’s no point. I’ll be dead soon anyway—a few days at most. The Wasting Death is almost over. Don’t waste your Blessing on me. I’ve lived my term.’ Meg tried to protest, but Emma slowly wagged her head until Meg acquiesced. ‘There’s not enough time to argue, girl. I need you to hear me out. I don’t have a lot of time.’
Meg placed the wattle on the earth where she’d buried the soldier more than three years ago. She didn’t know his name—only that he tried to prevent all that had transpired by warning Samuel of Truth’s intentions. Truth had killed him, and killed Samuel in an attempt to steal the amber crystal. Meg reached up to her shoulder to scratch the ear of the rat perched there, and Whisper gratefully lowered her head. The image equivalent for the pleasure expression of
Aah
formed in Meg’s mind. No one had expected a rat to be the Conduit’s protector. Yet she’d dramatically rescued it from Truth’s grasp twice—once in Samuel’s cave, and once in Port of Joy when Truth kidnapped Meg and Jon. And she’d saved Meg’s life at least as many times again.
Jon. The bittersweet memories swooped like a mousehawk and Meg shivered in the sunshine. Her son would be two years old now…the Queen’s grandson…Treasure’s son. Some days she couldn’t keep his smiling face and tiny hands and fingers and toes from her mind. But the pain, though still present, was losing its keen edge. She ran her left hand across
her swollen belly and knew that time would erode her sorrows. Button Tailor had brought love and a new life from within.
She had three graves to visit. This unknown young soldier she promised to honour every year on Alunsday because he’d died just before Alunsday trying to bring hope. Samuel’s grave, by the old cave above the village, she would visit every Erinsday, because he was the single link to the heritage that tied her to the amber crystal. And Emma’s grave she would visit whenever she really needed to talk to someone who would listen without condition to the stirrings in her soul. They had brought the old woman back from the hills for burial in her cottage garden, and Meg made it her duty to tend to the garden, restoring it to a wild beauty she knew the old woman would have appreciated.
The men who’d pursued the Conduit were dead. From the latest ballads of travelling minstrels and stories brought in by Saltsack Carter, the Queen and her Seers believed that Lady Amber was dead after the weird battle at Whiterocks Bluff, and that was how the people of Summerbrook intended for it to remain. Truth’s violent visit revealed the danger of outsiders knowing Meg’s true identity. The people of Summerbrook held a public gathering in Archer’s Inn and promised Meg and Button Tailor that they would keep her secret, and so ensure everyone’s safety.
Meg watched the lithe golden dingo padding between the mallee trees. Sunfire was home and he was happy hunting for game across the bushland. She breathed in the strong scent of eucalypt and listened to the magpies warbling in the trees. Yellow and white and pink and blue and violet blossom and flowers adorned the hillsides. Summerbrook was beautiful, and it was where she belonged.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF WESTERN SHESS
The title of Shess for the vast western regions first appeared on cartographers’ documents during the seven-century reign of the Ashuak Empire, when Emperor Haarva began his expansionist crusade, and the Ashuak word ‘Shess’, meaning ‘foreign ones’, referred to a conglomerate of tribal factions with diverse cultures and languages. Despite disharmony and constant factional fighting between the many tribes, the great Ashuak armies failed to control the land they invaded. Instead, they learned that a disunited enemy was more troublesome than a united one because they were constantly harassed and confronted by new tribal groups who did not accept that the defeat of their neighbours also signified Ashuak rule over them. During the period of the Ashuak Empire, individuals sometimes tried to unite tribal groups against the common enemy. The concept of nationalism never superseded parochial tribalism, but the Ashuak principles of expansion and imperial rule took root, and after the Empire collapsed the strongest tribes in the north and west gradually dominated their neighbours to establish fledgling kingdoms.
Western Shess first took shape under the warrior chieftain Bigaxe Royal, a veteran of several battles with the Ashuak invaders. Bigaxe declared himself king of his region, demanding that his neighbouring tribal leaders recognise his sovereignty, and ruthlessly enforced his leadership over the many dissenters. Curiously, Bigaxe retained the Ashuak name for the region, probably because the only existent maps of the land were Ashuak in origin.
Royal successors settled their capital at Port of Joy and extended dominion further north and east during three centuries of Royal control, but rival kingdoms in the north in mountainous countryside eventually halted expansion. To the south, fierce tribal resistance, reminiscent of the war against the Ashuak invaders, stopped the kingdom from growing larger.
Although a patriarchal lineage, the death of King Godson Royal from illness shortly after the death of both his sons in battle left his only remaining child, his daughter Sunset, to succeed to the throne. Queen Sunset Royal defied numerous political manoeuvres to prevent her succession and assassination attempts once in power to successfully rule for twenty-seven years, before her son, Future Royal, began to fight for the throne, backed by religious rebels.
Religion is split between the ancient shamanistic forms with a multiplicity of spirits informing their followers, and the spreading monotheistic Jarudhaism imported from the eastern lands.
Jarudhaism is a corruption of the faiths originally started in the old eastern empires and kingdoms, a blend of Hohdaism and Jaru, along with some of the teachings of the philosopher Alwyn, called Alun in the
Shessian sect, as well as aspects of the shamanistic beliefs of the earlier Shess tribes. In its simplistic form, Jarudha is the one god who created the world and all of the people, and who has set down his laws for life through a series of great books collectively called
The Word. The Word’s
origins can be traced back to the Hohdan priests of the Ashuak Empire and a text called
Jaru’s Gift
that arose from earlier works written by Jaru philosophers, but subsequently
The Word
has been expanded to encompass at least fifteen known philosophical and religious works. Followers of Jarudha believe that Jarudha’s hand guides the affairs of the world, and that Jarudhan disciples only act according to His Will. They also believe that the world is corrupt and sinful, and that the time is approaching when Jarudha’s disciples will rise and assert dominion over the unfaithful who will be converted or destroyed.
In Western Shess, Jarudha’s disciples are synonymous with magical ability that is called the Blessing. Acolytes who demonstrate genuine magical skill are elevated to the rank of Seer, and the Seers believe that they are the vehicles for moral and spiritual consistency and reform. Jarudhaism is confined to the capital city, Port of Joy, and nearby towns. Outlying villages do not have Jarudhan representatives living in them.
The political structures are quite simplistic because of the tribal roots and brutal determination of Bigaxe Royal and his successors to keep control. Essentially the regent is the supreme authority and law, and the leadership beneath is militaristic. The religious leadership is the only exception, and tensions between the Royals and the Jarudhan disciples have been taut throughout the kingdom’s history.
The Royal influence as a physical presence seldom extends beyond ten days’ travel from Port of Joy, so many of the outlying farming districts and villages are not directly affected by the laws and edicts enforced in the city and close towns. Many of the distant villages are operated communally or in loose democratic ways, and taxes are paid, sometimes irregularly, as tithes to representatives of the local Tithe Lord.
The naming tradition has always centred on people being identified with their employment or place where they were born. Before the rise and fall of the Ashuak Empire, Shessian inhabitants had single names, but the Ashuak use of surnames was adopted and retained after the Empire collapsed. A woodcutter or butcher would be called Woodcutter or Butcher as the surname and then words commonly used in the trade were often used as first names. Hence there might be a family of three boys named Log, Crossgrain and Handsaw Woodcutter.
Children born into the Butcher family might be named according to cuts of meat or implements or even animals.
Surnames do not automatically identify related families. Farmer is a common surname, for example, and there would be unrelated Farmers in the same village and across the entire kingdom. Of course, descendants of a family of Sailors can move into other working industries, in which case someone named Hawser Sailor could well be the bartender in a local tavern, while Seam Clothmaker could be a farmer. Sometimes people also change their surnames when they change work. So Labourer Pullman, whose father was working on the wharves, could join the army and change his name to Labourer Onespear by choice. Western Shess has not yet conducted an official census or established a corporate identification system and so personal names are only useful for personal identity. Foreign names are evident in the cities and large towns, but the rural communities generally retain the traditional and simple name forms.
Shessian language has specific grammatical rules. A sentence is organised with the verb, the subject and then the predicate. Common usage has reduced many sentences to phrases best understood in expression than in straight translation.
The English sentence, ‘I am eating my food’ becomes approximately ‘Eating I am my food’—‘Doshalinae emahdu mahdu shali’—although its more accurate expression would be ‘Doshalinae emahdu’ (‘I’m eating’). In common usage, however, it is expressed as ‘Doshemah’.
Thus, ‘If you touch my wife, I will kill you’ becomes ‘Kill you I will, if touch my wife you do’—‘Sunahso yahwu emah, ha kaso mahdoos yahwu.’
Greeting is simple. ‘I’m pleased to meet you’ in formal form is ‘Jahn yahwu emahdu tessa’, but it’s common usage is a brief ‘Jahntess’, which serves as ‘hello’ does in English. The equivalent to ‘good day’ is ‘Jarubahn’, which originated from a very complicated ‘Umen emahdu ehae yahwu nena fueppo bahn t’Jarudha’, meaning ‘I am happy to see that God has given to you another day’.
‘I have planted the rain crop’ is expressed as ‘Nesoss emah epphanuhk’, and ‘Light the fire’ is ‘Ooh shah’, often expressed as a single word. The common soldier’s insult ‘Your mother fucks everyone!’ is ‘Hur yahwudo oyehn epyahn!’ although it’s generally expressed as ‘Hur epyahn!’
The language has developed some pleasantries, so that the English ‘please’ is expressed as ‘tessa’ at the completion of a sentence, as in ‘May I please speak to you?’ – ‘Casan emah yahwu, tessa?’, and ‘Excuse me’, becomes ‘Mahni mah’. But Shessian is an abrupt, focussed language in the main, and niceties are generally reserved for the royal courts.
Verbs are simplistically broken down into identified action, past (ne), present (du) and future (so) forms. For example:
