The Legend of El Shashi (2 page)

I inhaled deeply, feeling my stomach stir. Sweetbread a-bake in the kitchen, or I was a greater idiot than that drudge. Delicious! And
–Mata be praised–did I smell beef stew with rich gravy? The house special! Toris, the head cook, was an absolute marvel. Her fare fed local legend, making Telmak Lodge the envy of every inn south of Elaki Fountain.

Ay
. I had before me four days further travel through Hadla’s Skirts, keeping a sleepless watch for lean, hungry timber wolves and the even more dangerous jerlak, before partaking of Sherm Inn’s dubious charms on the northern fringe. Bedbugs and fleas–but better than an icy night beneath the cart! Then, several makh of the fifth morrow should bring me to the Ry-Breen Crossing, and with favourable progress over the twin massifs of Shaly Ridge to the north and a shade east, I would reach Elaki Fountain by midday the day after that. A route I knew as well as the lines upon my own palm.

But first, I
must gird myself with the courage needed to brave Telmak Lodge.

I saw to my animals before my own comforts. My father had drummed into me by word, and
by leather strap when words failed to impress, ‘A man who cares not for his animals cares not for life itself.’ Then I saw my chattels locked in the safehouse and the guard paid his due.

These tasks struck off, I ducked into the pumphouse. Truly told, I smelled skunksome even to my own nostrils. Laziness born of lack of company in the mountains, Arlak! Another day I might have oiled my hair, or paid five brass terls for a hot shave and a trim of my unruly curls, but not this day. Though my personal grooming had latterly been the chief object of Rubiny’s scorn, mirrors tell no lies. Roymerian maidens are bold creatures withal, and audacious in pursuit of a man. Many a compliment
–ribald or courteous–have I savoured for my mother’s jet-black hair, striking dark eyes, and tan complexion. A rangy frame square in the shoulder and lithe in the hips and waist comprised my father’s bequest. Combined with my demanding work and outdoors lifestyle, it needed little by way of maintenance. Thus, from my early manhood, I had been left in no doubt as to what maidens should wish to do with a man of my ilk. In turn I exercised scant restraint. Why, in Mata’s name, spurn one’s natural gifts?

In the mirror my grin failed to cheer.

Janos did not believe in such liberties. His austerity was oft apparent, from the simplicity of his single-roomed log cabin, to the way he took meals, to his outlook on life. After my parents’ death, he took me in until I could face living again. Unbidden, his dry scorn echoed in my memory: “So help me Mata, we might be trapped in a blissfully rustic village a hundred leagues from civilisation, Arlak, but the depths of your ignorance astound me!”

“I know lots of things, Janos.”

“You couldn’t find darkness in a mineshaft, boy! Wake up!”

I scowled fiercely at the wall.

“Fine. What’s the capital city of Yumark?”

“
I … I don’t know. Do I care? No. Where’s this leading, anyway?”

“
Yumark
is
a city, you overweening ignoramus!” His forefinger danced beneath my nose. “Right, my mind is fixed. Your education starts today–like it or not. You’ll dig vegetables by day, and study the scrolleaf by night.”

And so I learned from Janos the lay of the lands, numerology, the ways of the senses,
and how to read and write in both the Umarik and Eldrik scripts. I learned to speak the liquid Eldrik tongue. Janos instructed me in the nuances of shalik rune interpretation, in the histories, politics, and many subjects besides. Some of his methods were inexplicable, such as the practise of hypnosis, but the breadth of his knowledge was uncommon and his ability to instruct, dazzling. Religion played no great part in the breadth of his teaching, but it did figure in subtle ways. Before I knew it, Janos became the voice of my conscience. We clashed in various ways at various times, and none more so than over my conduct with the daughters of Yuthe.

My brace of terls clinked into the housekeeper
’s box as I welcomed the genial sunlight on my shoulders. A fresh linen shirt chafed my skin agreeably, starched and hot-pressed by a servant, and I found myself strutting a little as I entered the courtyard. Janos would have snickered at such preening.

Janos.
Ever my keeper. He held that the quoph, the third soul, was immortal, and that it required proper discipline to elevate the quoph to the divine plane of Mata, the creator God.

We Umarites
hold that persons have three souls. The lowest of these is the quath, sometimes called the animal soul, which is the seat of emotions, desires, and one’s fundamental needs. What the Eldrik call the personality, we call the quatl–one’s character, background, and upbringing, beliefs, and so forth. And lastly there is the quoph, which lives on after death. This is the highest, deepest, and most mysterious of the three souls. Some believe in an afterlife, some pray to gods or yammariks, some believe in reincarnation–and then there are men like me, men who have little time for religion, who believe that there is nothing after death. A void. Nothing forever.

His religion was not for me. I should step out of the shadows and
make my own mark upon my own life. Refuse to be his lackey forever!

So thinking, I combed my fingers through my hair
and regarded Telmak Lodge’s wood-frame solidity. My gaze stepped warily across its heavy dark beams and white-limed walls, its deep casement windows and protruding double-gabled façade, as though I had never seen it before. The forecourt was busy this makh. A man’s entrance might go unnoticed. He might steal into a dark corner and there, unremarked, drain his cups.

As I sidled forth, I had no greater wish.

Several makh later, as I quaffed my fourth draught of a potent, bitter Imurian root beer to an inward sigh of pleasure, I became aware I had company. Peering blearily over the rim of my silver-lipped goblet, I discerned the flawless features of Rubiny o’Telmak and coughed involuntarily, spluttering beer upon the table.

I
wiped my mouth upon my sleeve.

“Learned our manners from a swineherd?” she greeted me. I was trying to decide if the table was moving, or if it was my head imitating a rowboat upon my shoulders. “How is farm life? Still growing your scrawny vegetables in the mountains?”

I swallowed, and tried to hide my soil-blackened fingernails beneath the tabletop. “Goosh, er, hello Rub–”

“’Goosh’? Had a drop too much, Arlak Sorlakson?”

People were turning on their benches, sensing entertainment at hand.

“Prob’ly.”

“Hopeless, that’s what you are! And you know what they say. He who can’t hold his beer, can’t hold a woman.”

Shame
I could not punch a certain woman! Who had warned her of my arrival had done me an ill service. While it was beneath the daughter Telmak’s station to wait upon customers, baiting customers was clearly a coin of another stamp. Her long Roymerian skirts, gathered close to her trim waist and embroidered in painstaking detail by the labour of her own fingers with scenes of traditional country life such as beekeeping, beer-brewing, keg-wrestling at the Doublesun Cahooday festival, and hawking, swished as she moved closer to my bench–the better to inspect my inebriated state, I imagined.

At least I had seen the pumphouse! I no longer
stank of three days of eating the dust of my jatha team. Proudly, I wore my new jerkin over a clean rumik, belted neatly at the waist, and a travel-worn but acceptable pair of thexik trousers that formed the basic wardrobe of nigh every man in the room.

I
grunted like an articulate hog at my goblet, “I haven’t any problem–”

“But I hear you do have a particular problem,” Rubiny cooed, arched of eyebrow as she played to her audience. “A rather
… small … problem. Haven’t you, peasant boy?”

People sniggered loudly. The room suddenly felt hot. The clever tongue of a trader served me well in the marketplace, but in her presence it became nought but a
stout plank. I blurted out, “Wait just a stinking span!”

“Now, now, watch your tone,” she warned. “I’m the daughter Telmak and you would do well to remember your station. It’s you who’re doing the stinking around here
, you dung-shovelling simpleton!”

Laughter beat against my ears. A dim recollection of my earlier resolve percolated through my addled wits and assumed a deadly new form. I stumbled to my feet, slurring, “To Hajik with you, wench!”

She gasped.

“Leave me, I
–”

“What?”

My eyes were pinned to her torso. I had forgotten how attractively her dress moulded itself to her fine figure. “Leash … me …”

Rubiny drew back a step, drawing ragged breath, and crossed her arms across her chest as if to ward off my
lascivious gaze. Then her brow drew down and she snapped, “What? No invitations this season? Highsun approaches!”

I blinked several times. Processing a simple thought
took forever. “What for?”

“What do you mean, what for?”

“Waste my breath, Shrubbiny, I would.”

Her voice rose
as the breath of a storm wind snapping at one’s cloak. “How dare you mangle my name like that, you worthless, striploose male! You’re sloshing with beer!”

“Quite.” Care had fled hand in hand with common sense.
Had I not started this fight? Four large goblets of strong beer spoke up for me: “You’ve something to say, shrub–Rubinshee?”

“Say? To you?” Rubiny drew herself up. Her response achieved a shrilling pitch that pained my ears. “Will you not declare your undying love and devotion, as before? Have you tossed a copper for a few
shop-worn lines from some halfwit ulule? Or composed an ode to the beauties of your own nose? Don’t embarrass me again! Last time you slobbered over my hand like some hog at the trough–disgusting!”

Our audience roared and hooted.
Shame made me angry enough to momentarily burn through the fug in my head. Leaning across the table, I shot back, “Have you something
intelligent
to say, Rubiny? That’s what I meant. Because way I see it, this beer makes for the better company!”

Some distant
part of me could not believe what had just spilled from my lips. It cried that the goose was loose, that the Alldark Hounds had been unleashed and the recall whistle tossed into the ocean’s blackest depths. Another part of my quatl cheered lustily. This makh, for the first time, Arlak was man enough to speak his mind plain and clear.

I felt sick.

I may as well have driven my hunting knife between her ribs. Rubiny’s features blanched to a dreadful pallor and she sagged like a half-drained wineskin, clutching the nearest chair back for support. Tears started in her eyes, a sight I had never seen before–but, rather than summoning the herald for a victory chant, I pictured myself slinking away beneath the tables as a cur flees the beating of a master’s stick.

Thick silence enfolded us.

An apology should have been in order. Instead, all I could grit between my teeth was, “I care for nought but a quiet drink, Rubiny o’Telmak. Now leave a man be.”

I saw her spin, but I never saw what she
held. Pain exploded in my jaw. I dropped as though I had been kicked by an angry jatha.

Next, I remember being sprawled beneath the wooden bench I had been sitting
on, watching an ulinbarb-twig broom sweeping toward my tender skull.

The morn was upon me
.

Riddle me rhyme, riddle me ree,

What silk ties tighter
,

Than Getha
madi?

Traditional Hakooi handfasting ceremony:
Love Knot

There was no athocary at Telmak Lodge, so I had to make do with pinching shut the gash on my chin and continuing my journey. I fingered the bruised skin with grudging admiration. It would scar later.

Rubiny must have struck me with a goblet. Roymere goblets are hardwood on a cast ormetal base,
with a moulded ormetal rim, often carved with pithy sayings or charred with the heated tip of knife in a process called umanthi. Evidently they made for serviceable clubs as well as drinking vessels. Surely no woman alive could otherwise possess such strength of arm?

For once, I had stood up to her and not just meekly bowed my head. Good.
Served her right, the number of times she had humiliated me!

Anyways, best I forget my a
dder-tongued nemesis. I should find a sweet girl to grace my home–a Janos phrase shop-worn by recent overuse. A vein throbbed at my temple. Gods, I had anna ahead to sample life’s richness. Staid and settled at my age? I should think not!

Why did thinking about
her
always make me fume? Rubiny o-blasted Telmak! So much for Janos’ jerkin improving her favour. Rubiny had proved her favour upon my jaw instead.

The day’s travel was thirsty work, made thirstier by the lingering queasiness of
my abused innards. My hangover pounded like Janos’ forge at full blast. A sultry humidity rose in waves from the tilled fields and the cloying burnt-umber scent of bragazzar woods alongside the track tickled my nostrils with gritty pollens. I removed my undershirt and let the sweat run freely down my neck and chest. At a small river crossing I paused to refresh myself, but after a makh or two in the muggy depths of Hadla’s Skirts, the cool waters seemed but a fever-dream. I tossed the jatha their head, and slumped into a lolling doze upon the sun-drenched bench of my cart.

In the l
ate afternoon, the weather broke in a thunderstorm that grumbled and snarled overhead like an elderly dog which has lost his former menace. I ducked beneath the cart to shelter from the short but heavy shower that followed. Come nightfall, I carefully set about my camp the tripwires and bell-snares that would warn of a wolf’s approach–knowing I had to sleep or I would be less than useless come the morn. I dreamed of last anna’s disastrous proposition to Rubiny and how she had tongue-thrashed me until I fled from her presence, and later of the carter and his dire prediction for my journey. My sleep was ill, my dreams Ulim-haunted.

The first word to pass my lips
when dawn broke was a curse.

Beyond the low hills of Shaly Ridge,
five days beyond Telmak Lodge, the route changed from a deep-rutted cart track into a proper road paved in burgundy-coloured wishbone bricks. Sowing season had at last yielded to Springtide. This region was well named the breadbasket of Umarik, for here the fruit plantations of the ridge’s northern face turned to ripening fields of grain: moxi and lymat in the higher regions, and verdant hewehat where the road abutted the stream locally called the Silcan, which meandered sleepily from the Urm Hills to the walled town of Elaki Fountain, whence I was bound.

Thus my mind turned to my vegetables, the kale, lohki, renj
, and limmerwort, and the herbs which would only grow in the mountains, and I began to calculate the profit I might turn this week. As the piles of terls and ukals mounted in my head, I began to smile. When I saw the bustling crowd at the towering town gates, I whistled a merry tune.

I banished the trader’s grephe, and Rubiny, from my thoughts.

*  *  *  *

The marketplace was heaving. Jammed against the three-man-tall sandstone defensive ramparts at the southern end of town, it
perfectly captured the suns’ reflected heat. Bloodlike runnels of russet clay dust, scuffed up by a thousand boots, streaked my forehead and neck as though I had been daubed with costly Lanthrian dye. Jatha lowed, swine squealed, and caged lyoms screeched their fear. The stench of dung and faeces overpowered all else. Three days running, I paid a waterboy to fetch sustenance rather than leave my stall. Because another border spat with the Lymarians to the north had flared up, Janos’ swords fetched nearly half again what I had expected. My cart emptied rapidly and my purse knocked weightily upon my thigh. I envisaged a return days earlier than usual.

Perhaps, I mused, I should sample the city’s entertainments before I left? There were no such diversions beneath Janos’ watchful eye. Indeed not.

Although I stank like those swine!

Nothing a makh or two in the pumphouse would not remedy, and then
… ay. As the shadows lengthened that day, I was in an expansive mood, haggling more out of habit than need. My eyes touched the Songstrel spire that was Elaki Fountain’s signature feature, a delicate finger of rosy palisk-quartz from which the dioni and daimi orisons were daily and seasonally sung to the Gods, calculating that sunset was less than a makh distant. In my hands I held the last and finest Lykki short sword.

“Hold, trader!” A bear’s-paw of a hand stopped the blood in my wrist. “Let me see that
blade.”

This
man towered head and shoulders above me, and I am no stripling. His visage was a battlefield of scars.

“But I’ve
a customer already.”

I stared up at the man’s lips, parted in a salikweed-stained snarl. Use of the weed, which is said to be addictive and grants a man berserker strength in combat, stains the lips, teeth
, and gums a bluish-purple. It also kills. This man would not live beyond his thirtieth anna. “Your customer,” growled the lips, “is no longer interested in this weapon.”

The other man said, “But I
–”

The giant’s grip tightened until I yelped in pain. “He isn’t interested.”

My bones ground together like a poorly greased cart wheel. From the corner of my eye, I saw my erstwhile customer bolt. No fool he. But that left me with the big ape. Should I yell …? No. Instead, I tried a nervous bluster, “I’ll summon the guard if you don’t back off–”

“There’s no need for nastiness. Release him, Tortha.”

Her voice was honey to my ears, and the stillness of a forest pool enshrouded by dappling willows. There was no need to see her face to know she was beautiful. The man called Tortha stepped back; relinquishing his hold as a wardog leaves a corpse–reluctantly, baring its teeth in a blood-dipped snarl. From behind him stepped a slight figure, robed in dove grey from head to foot, neither short nor tall but comfortably in between. My eyes could not penetrate the shadows beneath her hood. But she was rich, and cultured, and despite her disguise, completely out of place in Elaki Fountain’s steamy marketplace.

There is a trader’s instinctive skill of sizing up one’s clients. Few make good profits without this grephe-talent. Often the body or hands grant clues no speech can convey, and so it was with this woman. An
image flashed to mind: me as a torfly entangled in her spun-silk web, a delectable but deadly entanglement. My fingers curled around the sheathed Lykki sword. A snake coiled in my gut.

The better to disguise my unease, I lowered my gaze. Proper deference to one of
high station. “How may I assist you, Honoria …?”

“The sword. Name your price.”

Not for her the nuanced approach. “This is not just any sword,” I began, glancing from the woman to the brute. “This is the finest example of its craft in all Roymere–” Tortha’s deepening scowl reminded me of my mortality. I hurriedly adjusted my sales pitch, “–but for you, I can offer the excellent price of two … of
one
hundred Lortiti Reals.”

Tortha was grinning, I noticed sourly, no doubt enjoying my discomfort. The woman did not hesitate. “Done and
well bargained for,” she purred. “Give the trader his due, Tortha.”

My hands
quivered as I accepted the heavy pouch from his paw. One hundred was a fair price for a blade of superior quality, but it was still a substantial sum, the province of the truly wealthy. Janos would be delighted.

“Aren’t you going to check it?”

“Check it? Why, Honoria, I would not be so presumptuous–”

“It could be ormetal.”

I balanced the pouch in my palm, hearing a reassuring clink, conscious of the heft and texture of the thick coins beneath the pliant leather. “I’m certain that all is in order.”

“Check the bag!”

Her command made me jump like a startled bullfrog. I fell to loosening the buckles as frenziedly as Yuthe’s nectar lay within and immortality itself were in my grasp, all the time thinking: Why was this so important to them? Why a sword? What were they truly buying?

But oh! The sight of one hundred Lortiti Reals softly glimmering, the thick pure gold of the highest quality, the hallmark of the golden marmoset graven upon each side
… I must confess, a fool’s grin lay plastered across my face as I peered within the pouch.

In that instant, a pale, slim hand reached up to the brocade collar of my jerkin and the woman remarked, “What a very fine g
arment you’re wearing, trader–a garment worthy of a Hassutl! Where did you get it?”

“It was a gift.”

“Oh?”

“From the same man in Yarabi Vale who made the sword, actually, a craftsman of great skill and repute
–Janos the Armourer.”

“And how excellently it fits your broad shoulders!” she exclaimed, stepping closer to examine the beadwork.

Myrrh? I wondered at her perfume. Myrrh for embalming, and what else? Cinnamon? Cloves? Most unusual … and cloying. I felt odd. Was it the heat? What had I just said to her? My memory of our conversation was as dust sliding between my fingers.

She said, “I am called Jyla, and I have an eye for quality work. That is why I picked
out your Lykki short sword. I’m always in the market for a good sword.”

I coughed. Such a remark I might have attracted in an alehouse, or even a brothel, but never in my experience from a lady of her undoubted station. Innuendo, yes, but as subtle as a charging pachyderm. This was beyond flattery. Suddenly, I could not quickly enough see the backs of this strange pair.

I snapped the pouch shut. “Thank you exceedingly for your custom, Honoria Jyla. You are as gracious as you are radiant. I shall convey your compliments to Janos when next I see him.”

“Does this Janos not trade his own wares?”

“He does not travel much,” I replied quickly. “I act as his agent … ah, in this region. For a small commission, you understand. Business is business.”

“Of course,” Jyla agreed, adjusting her hood to allow me a glimpse of her eyes. “Business is business, trader. A good
eventide to you.”

“Likewise be yours.”

My reply was automatic; my fingers, clasping the pouch against my thigh, were as cramped and immobile as the branches of a petrified tree. A shadow had crossed my quoph just then, a chill deeper than mere bone or flesh could endure–for I was certain of what I had seen.

Her eyes were black. Sclera, iris and pupil alike were as black as onyx, holes of nothingness bored into a statue’s perfect face; twin voids out of which no good thing could conceivably emerge.

I could not suppress a shudder.

*  *  *  *

I own, I tried to forget all about the Honoria Jyla. But, just a few makh after I departed Elaki Fountain, I had the double misfortune to encounter another Honoria. As my fingers deftly stitched a red-crested parakeet’s broken wing, I was leagues away in ruminations worthy of any cud-chewing jatha, thinking:

I have always loved animals.
Janos labelled my way with animals ‘magic’. This, mark my words, from an otherwise rational man … utter hogs-breath! Granted, I can calm a wild black bear enough to treat its injured paw, and even the most ferocious storm kestrel will bend its wing to my touch. My greatest boast is this: I have touched a blue condor. Truly told, I have touched that rarest of birds, which is said to signify Mata’s favour and is indeed, the embodiment of Her presence in the world. Let the credulous attend! The condor brought me no good fortune. That selfsame makh, I learned of my parents’ murder.

Magic? I expect it requires respect. Animals mistrust fear, but warm to respect. Janos insists it is more to do with heart. He once said that I could not knowingly abide the suffering of any of Mata’s creatures, nor allow them harm. Ay. When I see a jatha limping, or a hedgehog torn by the spotted salcat’s cunning claw, something i
nexplicable happens within my quoph. It is a desire to help, but at once more fundamental and more compelling. When as a child I used to hold my breath, my father would smile and say, ‘You’ll need to breathe sooner or later, Arlak.’ This desire was akin to spring water welling up; an endless upward and outward pressure. It must spill over. A powerful river, it could not but flow.

In those unbearable seasons after the Faloxx slew my childhood, I tried desperately to fill the ache hollowing out my breast from the inside. But it was Mata’s creatures that saved my sanity. I began to bring animals home, great and small, furred and feathered. Janos said that caring for them taught me to care for myself.