The Legend of El Shashi (26 page)

I
ached nonetheless.

As I gazed over the soaring spires of Eldoran, I had to wipe a mist from my eyes in order to pick out the slender plinth of
Warlock’s Roost. Nigh four anna of my life spent here. I left a changed man. Changed forever.

The rising sun
burnished each peak of the Ammilese March like a spear tipped with molten gold. Part of me remained out there … somewhere, wondering if this was a last farewell. I raised my hand to my cheek where P’dáronï had kissed me. Arlak-
nevsê
, she had whispered. Arlak-my-soul. Her tears had mingled with mine. How desperately close I clutched her slight form, unwilling to ever let her go.

Ay, beyond those mountains lay her birth-heritage.
She was born in a land ruled by the fierce Nummandori Overlords, a race of creatures she described as older and wiser than either the Eldrik or the Umarik races. Little did they care for the affairs of human beings. Sold as common merchandise–what a fate! I could scarce imagine what it must mean for families, and lives, to be torn apart by such an Ulimspawn trade.

What a life she had already lived.

Quietly, I reflected: Did I understand even the smallest jot of her ways, this P’dáronï of Armittal? Could it be Mata’s will that every person should be whole? Truly whole? That none should suffer in body, mind, or soul, or sickness, or hurt of any kind? What a world that would be! Did the yammariks not preach such fables of the afterlife, for those who follow the paths of Mata? But for many people I had known, Nethe was the here and now, not some unknown future, and the magnitude of their suffering … oh Mata! It was too much to bear.

So could I tell
–or was this Mata’s province alone to answer–whether I encompassed the power to create newness of life within a person, or merely to salve a wound, to mend brokenness, and grant the dying another day? And how should I know when to stop trying and let a person pass on in peace?

Is it worse to attempt a healing and fail, than never to have hoped at all?

And should a man understand how to value love, and life itself, if he knows not their opposites of pain or hate, and death?

Was her blindness curse
… or gift?

The Faloxx is nought but a savage, unfit to be called human; wont to sup upon the flesh of his fellows, making laughter of torture, and building such bone-piles as would please none but Ulim Godslayer, furnishing the hellish halls of Nethe itself.

Lorimi the Historian:
Peoples of the Fiefdoms

I lounged upon the deck, gazing up at the billowing rows of white merriol silk sails that soared above our vessel, and wondered what it must have been like for my mother and father to make this selfsame voyage, the voyage where the bindings of love ensnared their hearts forever, amidst the turquoise waves silver-shot by flying fish, the harmonious singing of the mariners, and the vast tapestry of stars that robed the nights in majesty. It was easy to believe in Mata out here. The worst injury I had to attend was a broken wrist.

So
uth we sailed, and east, toward the Nxthu Straits and Faloxxir, land of the cannibal Faloxx. A pleasant breeze lent our sails full bellies. The crew lolled about idly, save to preserve what shade they could against the sultry Doublesun heat, and to occasionally trim a sail or adjust a rope. I opened P’dáronï’s book. She had asked me to read a word of knowledge–similar to a grephe, I imagined–that she had written about my life. It was entitled
The Great Wurm
.

A chill-tremor clasp
ed my spine in ice. But when I looked about, nary a cloud blemished the sky, nor was ought else amiss.

Truly told, for a moment I imagined I espied a blue condor, but when I marked it but a common grey come to perch amidst the rigging, I laughed at my fright. Twice only, in the greatest extremity, Arlak
–what had I to fear out here? Sunburn? Sholfish? Just look at those superstitious fools, all agog at the condor’s appearance!

As I bent closer to the beautiful script, the faint scent of P’dáronï’s favourite perfume, limnisflower,
tantalised my nostrils. I had to dab my leaking eyes. Be cursed to Hajik, was I once more doomed to lose a woman I held so dear?

“
At least I treated her right,” I muttered, feeling mordant at my past failures. “Mata, must I once more walk this road alone?”

At least I now had friends working with me. And a great list of new enemies, headed by this Talan, and Soymal, Head of the Inquisitors
–who I had seen at Pedyk’s Banishment before I knew who he was. He must have led my torture. In Eliyan’s estimation, ‘A viper, not a man, Arlak. A more poisonous creature I have never met.’

W
as Jyla therefore working for them, against them, or even without their knowledge?

My
quoph was laden with loss. Did this latest grief not serve to remind me the more eloquently of my children, Sherya, Lailla, Jerom, and Illia, and of all the Sorceress had torn away from me? How old would they be now?

Nay. Deliberately, I closed that door and turned back to the text.

Be it known: legend is his mantle
,

Eldest of his race, the awesome progenitor of all burrowing creatures
,

Name him God-mountain, sleeping at the root of the world
,

Exalted and cunning in ancient ways
,

The
Great Wurm, the wellspring of power.

He shall rise on a fateful day, lament it,

As El Shashi’s last stumble crosses the waters,

Royal voice of thunder, an
d lightning that rends the sea’s belly,

Yes, he will rise from the depths
,

And from amidst the dark creatures will he appear
,

Not to kill but to heal, not to break but to summon
,

No longer to plough the desert as before
,

Only
to await the master’s beck and call,

El Shashi’s duality, the reason that he be.

There was a note at the bottom. I squinted at it and read, ‘I have tried to render the Old Armittalese as best I can, preserving both form and meaning. Thus this Word conforms in no way to Umarite norms of poetry. I thought the first letter of each line noteworthy
–they spell
‘Be N’etha ryan no’e’
which translates in the Old Armittalese as,
‘To Nethe consign the ways of yore’
. May this Word, and Mata Herself, light your paths always.’

I
winced. And now she was a prophetess? Words so potent, they stirred the darkness within me to life. Mata, no … I had to deny my inner Wurm its moment in the sun! Carefully, I reread the poem. This was no matter for the faint of heart. Indeed, my poor store of courage quailed at the very notion, as my imagination supplied an image of the Wurm looming above me like a mountain, gobbling up forests, tearing into the very fabric of Mata’s creation with its insatiable appetite.

God-mountain? The reason for my existence?
I did not withhold a snort. Religious double-talk, I muttered to myself as I closed the tome with an irritated snap. I had marked P’dáronï for a woman of plain speech. Fancy my last stumble crossing a sea! Ridiculous. But the notion of ploughing a desert with the Wurm did intrigue me. Use the Wurm for good? Maybe next time I contemplated an act of trivial selfishness!

I wanted no more to do with Mata
this day. My grief was too raw; my fears too potent. My eyes had grown heavy-lidded. Tucking the volume beneath my arm, I ducked below decks to find an empty hammock.

“Catch up on your sleep, Arlak,” I declaimed to the empty hold, “and salve the world’s woes on the morrow.”

Should I miss P’dáronï of Armittal less in the depthless makh of my slumber?

Beloved of my soul.

*  *  *  *

I dreamed ill.

I saw K’huylia, beset by a legion of Ulim’s warriors, her flesh tormented with barbs and rods of burning iron. Tortha, torturing Rubiny upon Janos’ forge door. The smoking ruin of her face screamed abuse at me. The Wurm tore Sherya from my despairing grasp and tossed her down its gullet. Its bloodied mouth transformed into Jyla’s, laughing and mocking. I laboured to heal P’dáronï’s eyes, but they kept clouding over the moment I lifted my hands from her face. At my fifth attempt I opened my hands to reveal Tomira’s features. I recoiled. ‘It is Mata’s will,’ she sneered. ‘Why waste your powers on a defective slave when you could have me? Oh, I forgot, you refused because you were Matabound, you fool! Where is your Matabond of love now?’

I woke disoriented, clutching for the edge of my futon
, but instead finding myself rocking violently in a hammock. Alarmed shouts rang above my head. Feet pounded the decks. I heard an ominous grinding sound. Wood splintering? A man’s wail, severed mid-voice. More shouting and banging noises.

The ship was not moving as with waves.
It listed heavily to one side.

I crawled on hands and knees to my pack.
No way I was about to lose those precious books. Thankfully P’dáronï had seen fit to pack them in dryskin against bad weather. Shipwreck was not what I had imagined! With the pack in tow, I fought my way to the hatch and, raising my head above the decking, had my first shock of the morn.

At first I thought some monstrous serpent
was attacking our vessel, for a huge arm-like appendage stretched over the deck between the second and third masts. It had already crushed the railings. Several sails flapped loosely, their ropes snapped. But then I saw another arm upraised, lined with suckers bigger than my hand, and as I watched it slapped down on the deck with massive force. One of the mariners was trying to attack the beast with an axe, but his blows kept slipping aside on the tough, rubbery skin.

Not the Wurm
… I gaped in incomprehension. The creature was trying to climb up the side of the ship. That was the scraping noise I had heard. The sheer bulk of it! As those great arms tightened, crushing a fresh section of the railing, our ship heeled over, and the slippery grey-blue bulk of the creature rose into view. One of the tentacles held something. “Dear Mata!” I gagged. It was the lower half of a man’s body, sheared through just below the ribcage.

Another arm
wriggled across the deck. A fourth had clasped the rear of the ship, snarling the rudder. The steersman cowered behind his wheel.

“Pin the beast!”
shouted one of the men, casting his harpoon into the tangled mass of arms, where it struck and stuck.

“Karak!”
cried another. “Gods have pity on us!”

Further down the deck, I saw three of the crew trying to loosen the ship’s boat from its ties. Wise indeed! And I, rarely a man of notable
valour, decided at once to bind my fate with theirs. I crept along the slippery planking, testing each step with feet a-tremble.

I was halfway across the deck when, with a serpentine undulation of its body, the Karak flung another tentacle across the breadth of the ship. It coiled around the mast. Wood groaned in protest as with this new purchase, the creature strove to haul
itself higher out of the sea. Its suckers tore strips off the deck-wood. The yard-ends dipped beneath the waves. My feet were scrabbling for a hold, any hold, on an impossible slope, when the rope I clutched began to unravel.

Suddenly the cord shot loose and with a wail I splashed down into knee-deep water, for my boots had caught by c
hance on the edge of the deck right up against the ruined rail. I glanced to my right. There, close enough to reach out and touch, was the creature’s eye–a sallow orb the breadth of a man’s shoulders, filled with the light of an unholy, utterly alien intelligence. Truly told, ice cased the very marrow of my bones at this spectacle of demoniacal malevolence. I knew the Karak meant to destroy us–perhaps for no reason other than the pleasure of destruction–and drag the ship to the bottom of the sea if it were able.

A salty slap announced the ship’s boat had slipped free of its moorings. Calling upon Mata’s name I surged forward, heedless of
any other man, and threw myself bodily upon the gunwale. I scrambled in, shivering, my clothing sodden and torn. Two men were already aboard. One of the mariners thrashed through the waves toward the boat.

“Give him an oar!”

I cast about stupidly until I felt wood thrust into my hand. “Here!” I held it out over the water.

The skin of
the sailor’s bearded cheeks was grey with terror. Once he had a grip of the oar, the man well-nigh yanked me overboard in his eagerness to escape. I hauled him closer. Helped him get his arm over the gunwale. I was just leaning over to grab the back of his jacket when one of my fellows in the boat cried out in alarm, “The Karak! Watch out!” and knocked me aside with his shoulder. A tentacle smashed down between us. It stuck to the skin of my thigh where my trousers had ripped–the mere tip of a tentacle, but the thing was unbelievably strong.

Then I heard one of the masts snap. I glanced up to see it falling upon the Karak’s
marauding tentacle. The suckers ripped loose from my flesh, leaving a nasty wound. Blood welled up immediately. But the clinging man was not so fortunate, for the Karak snagged him even as the mast’s weight forced its tentacle underwater. He vanished from sight.

“Row! Put yer lazy backs into it!” A bellow in my ear made me jump. I snatched up an oar and rowed as though Ulim himself were aboard that ship.

“Row, you laggards!” It was the Captain of the mariners, and he had somehow gathered seven of the crew into the boat, including me. “Faster! It watches us!”

I, hindmost in our vessel as I plied my oar to the captain’s hoarse-throated beat, shuddered as the Karak’s tw
in orbs bobbed above the waves. They were fixated upon us. Though the gap was widening, we were yet close enough that I could discern an expression of baleful condemnation at our attempt to escape.

“It cares not for us, but for the plunder,” I suggested over my shoulder.

A vile curse constituted the Captain’s reply.

Suddenly I recalled a snippet of our conversation in the small makh of my parting night. Eliyan, noting, ‘It is thought the Karak are attracted to magic, Arlak. I believe that is why the Karak swarm around the Dark Isle
–for the Banishment is a monumental magic indeed. Some hold that the place was always a breeding-ground of the creatures. Your sighting through the Portal appears to confirm that view.’

‘So what’
s the Banishment like, Eliyan, to the initiated?’ I enquired.

‘
A fortress,’ said he. ‘Imagine a fortress whose walls of seamless stone–not a crack nor a join–extend from the roots of the world to the skies above. As you examine the length and breadth, and the height and depth of that fortress, you see there is no gate. No way in and no way out.’

‘So how in Nethe’
s name then does the Portal operate? Surely it must cross those fortress walls …?’

Eliyan smiled indulgently across the table. ‘Well-reasoned, Arlak. Let me be forthright. I have no answer. No convincing answer, that is. I could bore you with a thousand makh of argument and counter-argument
… to summarise–some form of teleportation, methinks.’