The Legend of El Shashi (14 page)

In a trice I was inside its throat.

I own it must have lain in wait. The monster was showing signs of intelligence–circling ahead, delaying an attack, and not merely thrashing along blindly as before. Hunting me? Perhaps I had stumbled into its trap. Given the leisure of retrospection, I would conclude that before this makh, I had still felt somewhat in control. I could lead the Wurm. Make it travel where I wished. Keep running until it returned to ground. This in turn had fed an illusion of security and comfort. Now the jatha had turned jerlak, an altogether more cunning, dangerous, and ruthless creature.

A second, wholly more inexplicable surprise was sprung upon me the instant the Wurm’s jaws closed about that lurmint. For a candle’s flicker of time, I witnessed a waking dream of Janos. I
sat at the jalkwood table in Janos’ kitchen. My head had sunk upon my chest as though I were sleeping. Janos stood directly behind me, his hands resting upon my head in the pose of a yammarik imparting the
keya
blessing of manhood upon a young man. Yet I recognised something sinister in the way he gripped my head, in the fierce set of his jaw. I sensed I wished to flee, but was held immobile by an unseen compulsion.

He chanted, ‘
Solûm tï mik
, in the name and by the power of Mata I charge you to seal this trust until–’

But his voice
faded, as though this leaf of memory scurried along on the wings of a blustering Glooming storm, and I realised that the wind’s strident music had turned into Jyla’s laughter blasting through the hallways of my mind, shredding the memory, blowing its wisps to Nethe. A presence stirred around the foundation-stones of my embittered quoph.

The darkness
was chittering back to her …

A magical creature which burrows with ease through the earthy ores should not
have been troubled by a mere tree, I imagined. But the lurmint was ancient. As the Wurm’s muscular maw ground shut, the tree resisted with a fearful din of splintering, snapping branches, and deep groans. Its thickset trunk twisted and became lodged crosswise in the beast’s throat. The Wurm roared! It convulsed like the huge river pike the Hakooi hunt with harpoons from their flat-bottomed riverboats, when a weapon is mistakenly thrust through the belly.

I was hugging a root or branch
–I cannot rightly recall–with both arms and legs wrapped about it. But my perch began to bow under the immense pressure. I saw mauve fields. Now sky, the clouds tinged a weird, wine-purple colour. Magic? Ay, great magic, prickling my neck in the same way Jyla’s first conjuration of the Wurm had all those anna ago. The realisation struck me forcibly. Stuck in the Wurm’s throat, my senses assaulted and abused by the beast’s unique magical essence, I sensed now the connection pulsing between us–a connection as intimate and necessary as some ghastly umbilical cord. Arlak and the beast; Arlak feeding the beast? The beast, feeding off of my healings? By what sorcery had she achieved this? The Sorceress needed power? She was … collecting magic? Unbelievable!

Then I tipped upside-down as the Wurm’s bulk rolled sideways.

Again, a sliver of a vision entranced me:

I
see Janos. Hiding in a flowerbed. Fragrant flowers, small and delicate, their petals the colour of eventide and their hearts, candle-bright. He is peering through the foliage. Hiding.

Voices. Two women. Nay, a woman and two young girls.
The lady is speaking to someone, a man. He cannot see the woman’s features, but at eye level, he can see the girls. Perhaps three or four anna of age, they hold hands with the woman, one to either side. Their mother? One is part-hidden behind her skirts. The other, who is close enough to touch, turns to look at Janos.

He freezes in palpable shock. Yet the girl cannot see him.
Impossible. Her eyes, set in a face of elfin, ethereal beauty, are disquietingly milky. She must be blind. But surely … for as she twirls her tumbling, white-blonde ringlets in her fingers, it is clear that she is regarding him directly, that his presence has been revealed.

Janos raises a trembling digit to his lips.

Voices: ‘I cannot abide it any longer, father!’

‘But you must, Aulynni. You must. You must understand my position, the position of the Council! This is a great thing
we’ll accomplish, for the greater good of our people …’

‘Father, don’t patronise me!’ the woman hisses. Her despera
tion rises as she continues, ‘I’ve read the scrolls. Surely, you who are foremost of the Sorcerers; you of all people, have the power to deny this vile … this thing … this abomination! How will these new exiles be chosen? Who writes the accursed lists? Who will decree their fate? Is all life not equally sacred? Have you not taught me this?’

‘Oh Aulynni, be not distressed. Within the moon
–’

‘Father, Talan-son-of-Lucan, I
beg you, must I fall upon my knees? Must I grasp your cloak and weep for these who are already doomed? What Lucan did was monstrous enough! Now this! Have you no pity?’

The man sighs. ‘There, now
you’ve upset Amal. Come here, child.’

He must be bending towards her. A pair of arms can be seen through the leaves, outstretched, and the child is trapped in a no-man’s land between the two adults. The man is still moving forward.

‘Don’t you dare touch her!’ The woman yanks the child back to her skirts. As she whirls, the child’s countenance turns from a profile hidden by her long, dark hair, to face us briefly.

I
was staring into a mirror, deeply shocked. That little girl was the very image of me! But the vision rushed on without regard for my thoughts:

Something breaks in the woman’s voice. A hint of hysteria, perhaps ev
en madness, as she whispers, ‘I’m sick of your lies. You pervert and poison everything you touch.’

I
see him now. Talan. He has turned as pale as his silvery shock of hair; his dignity, a trembling mess. ‘No, no …’

‘I will fight you to the end, F
ather. Mark my words. From this day, you may count me your deadliest foe.’

Talan’s eyes dart toward Janos. No! He’ll
be exposed! But the little blind girl is smiling as she wriggles her fingers. ‘Nothing but pretty flowers,’ she chirps.

And the dream dissolved
into nothingness.

The Wurm reared upwards to the sky, taking such great breaths that the wind
whipped through my hair. A rumbling earthquake began in its belly. The immense muscles of its throat flexed and surged as ocean billows. The lurmint tree bent further. Roots and branches snapped with sharp retorts. The trunk itself began to tear down the middle with a sound akin to cloth rent at the seams. And as the Wurm bore down with all of its hugely augmented power, there came a thunderous crack and I was suddenly and helplessly catapulted out of the Wurm’s craw like a stone whizzing from a slingshot.

A patch of springy lurganberry bushes broke the worst of my fall. In my dazed state, I tried to swim out of them. I
bled from a hundred scratches, but nothing mattered to me save to find my feet and flee from the beast. On torn hands and knees I scrabbled my way loose of the clinging brush. Kicking. Fulminating. Down a narrow gully I stumbled on failing legs, along an animal track, until I found my way choked by a rambling thicket of gold-petal tearaway briar.

A kind of madness gripped me. Like a looming black thunderhead, full of unspent malice, it puffed Ulim’s breath
into my being until I shuddered limb to limb and could barely summon the will to plant one foot before the next. I was running from it. Running into it. Fleeing from my own shadows.

I found myself screaming, “Mata! Mata! Mata!” over and over. As if She would care. It was part curse, part cry for help.

This day the heavens were mute.

Every face under the suns was set against me. Each time I stopped to catch
my breath, I sensed the Wurm closing in and I would press weakly on. Though I wanted to salve my wounds, my thoughts were the contents of a swine-trough and the power, usually so responsive, a well run dry. I ran blindly. I neither cared for nor counted the bruises I gained. I ran, and ran, and ran, until the night was old, my feet bled freely through my flapping boot-soles, and my ill-fitting trousers chafed my inner thighs raw.

I ran through the following day, through the burning
, debilitating heat, into the eventide following. I stumbled, I crawled, I stole a jatha from a farmer’s paddock and slept a couple of makh upon its back before the terror of the Wurm awakened me and I had to sprint away once more.

A long time after that,
when the stars rode high and bright, I realised I was running from nothing at all.

*  *  *  *

I slunk into our kitchen, weeping.

Rubiny was curled up in the rocking-chair close to hearth’s warmth, with a babe suckling at her breast. Tiny, dark curls, fingers curled around her mother’s thumb. Precious. Too bad
the selfish father had been out in the fields discovering how five anna out of the militia makes one unfit. My wife’s eyes looked puffy and bloodshot from crying, but she was dry-eyed now. And white with rage and exhaustion.

“The midwife left three makh ago,” said Rubiny, her every word etched in tiredness. “We’ve another daughter. Congratulations.”

It would have been better had she called me all the names under the suns. Instead, she was being excruciatingly civil. And the distance between us felt a hundred leagues wide.

“How is
–”

“Sherya? Sleeping.”

As she should be, considering it was the makh before dawn. It had taken from noontide to noontide, and most of the eventide following, before the Wurm had finally disappeared to wherever it spent the times between. My legs resembled pork jelly. By then I found myself three leagues from town, and had ploughed more fields in more circles and cut-backs than I could remember. But no-one had died.

This time.

“And how are–”

“Fine. Thank you for asking.”

“Can I–”

“I don’t need anything right now.”

I could not stand it any longer. “Look, I’m sorry, Rubiny! It was meant to be a joke. A stupid, practical joke.”

She nodded slowly. “Ah, the carbuncle.”

“I had no idea. How was I to guess it would summon the Wurm?” I sounded like a peevish old man, even to my own ears. “Had I but known!”

“I did
wonder what selfish thing you’d done.” Rubiny scowled at my ruined boots and bleeding feet. “Didn’t you heal yourself?”

“Several times.”

“A pretty shoddy job then, don’t you think?” She wiped her brow. I longed to help her, to strengthen her, but did not dare. “I thought you must’ve taken a bribe, or stolen something, or bedded another woman. Done something … noteworthy. Another woman might even be easier, Arlak. I could just leave you. I would, you know. Prove my mother right.”

I hung my head. “Ay.”

“You know what she said? The day I ran away from home, you know what she said?” I spread my hands. “She said you were a wastrel. A good-for-nothing cockerel who would amount to nothing in life. She said I’d end up leaving you.”

Rubiny tucked our tiny newborn closer to her breast. “Father was more direct. He ordered me not to enter the Matabond of love
with you. He said you weren’t the right man for me, and never could be.”

Her words cut so deep. I slumped into the nearest chair and just stared at her, unwilling, unable even, to believe my ears. Had I not a rapport with the Master of Telmak Lodge? Why then
… why encourage me? Had he not spoken kindly about my healing touch?

Dear Mata, I
had taken sword cuts in battle that hurt less. Where was She in the makh of my greatest need? Where was She now?

“Arlak, I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“No?”

“Maybe I was wrong, leaving those things unsaid. But now you have hurt me, and endangered the people I love most in the world. I need you to really understand how I feel. For the first time ever
, I thought my father might be right about you.”

Rubiny clamped her jaw, chopping a laugh short
as she were a butcher hacking a chunk of meat with his cleaver. “A pimple. A stupid, Nethespawn pimple! Hush, little one.” She stroked the baby tenderly. “Husband, there are nice fools and there are fools. Tonight, you are a fool. Did you not think? How many deaths does it take?”

I was still
smarting about the Master Telmak. How could he? Why had he not hunted us across the breadth of the lands? I made to get up, wanting to put my arms around her, but her words halted me mid-rise.

“I’
m not done with you yet.”

I plopped back down on the bench. Rubbed my hand absently on my
thexik trousers. Somewhere within, I searched for the courage to tell her what had happened within the Wurm.

“Arlak,” she whispered.
“My husband, when you told me about the Wurm before, I … truly told, I didn’t believe you. Mayhap I didn’t want to–but now I do. I’m sorry.” I ignored the tear trickling down my nose, fixated by the tenderness writ on her face. “I’ve been thinking … your actions saved a lot of people. That creature could have crushed the town, but you drew it away from us. From everyone.”