The Legend of El Shashi (34 page)

Jerom said to Rill, “I cannot hide from the children what might cost their lives. Would you?”

Again, the silence stretched as thin as Gethamadi silk. Finally I broke in, “Why not let judgement wait upon my tale? I would speak of our heritage. And I would have you know, Jerom and Sherya, that your mother and I are half-siblings. By Mata’s law our Matabond should never have been made, as we share the same father.”

The white faces around the table confirmed my fears, that they did not know this harsh truth. So I tossed in another, to ensure the platform was truly mine:

“I am half-Eldrik, the son of an Eldrik Warlock. And I may hold the destiny of all the Eldrik in my hands … if only I can work out the answers to Jyla’s curse.”

The rebellion of the quoph, my son, is an evil pass, a rejection of all that is Goodness in the eyes of Mata, and its fruit is akin to the bitterest frost of an Alldark night.

Soriam al’Fay’d
kin Thanen,
All That is Holy

I went after Lailla.

I quarrelled with the Father over the undertaking. In the end, the only concession I made to the multitude of his concerns was to take with me a companion, Brother Sherik by name. Sherik was once a champion wrestler in the pits of Mara-Udal in Damantia, an occupation as deadly as it was notorious. He had a tygar’s build, from the shiny dome of his huge head down to his feet, a third again as long and wide as mine.

“I hear you are strong!” he boomed. When Sherik spoke, which was almost never, the very trees listened. “Do you wrestle? I will teach you!”

Truly told, I thought I was strong until I wrestled the mountain.

We were six days upon the road, and I was limping along nicely following our ‘morning warm up’, when Sherik said his next words to me. “Why go to Hakooi?”

I replied, “My daughter left with a man she thought loved her. He is called Lenbis. I hear it goes ill with her. He beats her daily, and worse.”

Much worse. Oh Mata …

Jerom
showed me her letter as soon as they received it; a dirty, torn scrap of scrolleaf covered in barely legible handwriting. She was too afraid to entrust her message to the Qur’lik message-drums. Outrage and an overwhelming lust for vengeance were the least of my reactions. Quietly, in the dark makh of night, I swore an oath by all I knew was holy–that I would find her, and succour her. I told myself I would not kill this Lenbis. I would merely take my daughter to a better place.

Mark my words
, this time I would do my fatherly duty. At last.

Sherik nodded. “Let us therefore make haste.”

And he said not a word more until we reached the border between Elbarath and Hakooi, whereupon he purchased for us each a sword, and bade me secrete mine beneath my habit. The merchant appeared utterly unconcerned about selling weapons to monks.

On the one hand, to travel with a companion was a pleasure I had seldom had opportunity to enjoy. Sherik was steadfast, courageous, level-headed, thoughtful, and a more than adequate cook. Perhaps one had to be to satisfy such a girth, I chuckled to myself. But on the other, I had an ill grephe.
Was this right? And necessary? I could not shake the sense that the journey was somehow eclipsed in Ulim’s shadow, for I dreamed repeatedly the same thing: the foul Godslayer laughing at me. Just that. Laughing derisively, as though I were somehow playing into his hands.

I shared this grephe with Sherik.

“Tell me of this letter,” he said. And after I had shared the details, “I would do the same had I a daughter. But let us be on our guard, and pray.”

Thereafter, the usually taciturn Brother waxed lyrical in prayer every daimi and dioni orison. It exposed hitherto unsuspected depths to his quatl and quoph
–and I had known him for eleven anna, ever since his elevation to the Solburn Brotherhood. His faith had muscle. It was wholly unlike the intellectual, and often mystical, brand of religion I had once so despised and misdiagnosed in Janos. As we trod the byways of Hakooi we found ourselves speaking more and more openly, as man to man, about what lay in our hearts. Never with another man had I experienced this dear a camaraderie. I could be vulnerable with him and it did not matter. He neither judged nor condemned, and he gave much in return.

One day he said, “I have been considering the phrase
‘Solûm tï mik’
.”

“For three days since last we spoke?”

“Ay, has it been?” he grunted. “Indeed, I own you read into it both too much and too little. Have you never gone to Janos’ home and searched its hearth?”

“No
…”

A javelin to the heart! Cast well and true! Suddenly, excitement welled up
within me and I could not repress a little caper that made a broad smile break across Sherik’s face. “Too obvious, Brother?”

“Too obvious by far!”

Have you ever had a kind of knowing that lives deep in your very marrow, on a particular matter? A truth that rings within the quoph as a bell heard ringing from afar upon a clear day?

But first, I had a grim duty to perform. And so, with
a heaviness in our hearts, we entered Darbis in Hakooi that eventide.

*  *  *  *

Darbis as I remember it was a dirty harbour town sulking on the banks of the Tug River, a major tributary of the Nugar. Slapped-up wooden houses wrestled for space with animal-pens, sewage ran down the middle of the roads, and there was a constant din of river traffic, commerce, and gambling dens. Within our first makh in town, we twice saw men being robbed out in the open by gangs of ruffians. The second time the watch descended in all their wrath and a stand-up swordfight developed–which attracted no particular attention from the populace.

We picked a likely-looking alehouse and began our inquiries.

By noontide following we picked up a trail. It led us to the dock area. Lenbis owned a hulking, battered warehouse complex covering three-quarters of a block, and a walled compound hard alongside it that appeared built to repel an army, with seamless walls three stories tall and guard-lookouts on each corner. Travelling minstrel he was not. Sherik thrust out his jaw and popped his knuckles one by one.

“
Ay,” I muttered.

“Let us await the tide of darkness.”

This deep in the Glooming eventide came early, and with it, a bitter rain began to weep from the low, dark clouds. But Brothers are inured to the elements. Our cells were unheated, footwear was shunned, and we worked in all weathers. Sherik and I put our hoods up and crept back to the docks, making no more sound than the approaching storm.

Even the blustering wind, however, could not mask the sounds of revelry within. After skulking about for half a span, we found a side door with but one guard standing idly beside it, probably wishing he could join the party. From time to time he took a puff of his long dream-pipe, and the sallow smoke he exhaled periodically suggested nardis to me
–prolonged use would leave this man psychotic. Sherik melted into the night.

A few breaths later and a massive shadow enveloped the guard. I trotted forward and we pressed the door ajar.

A short corridor led to a second door, this one brass-reinforced and locked from the inside. After a short whispered consultation, Sherik fetched his unconscious victim, slung him over one shoulder, and we knocked politely at the door.

“Use the password, you idiot!”

“I’m Brother Tardik from the Guild of Athocaries!” I lied, cheerfully. “We’re on a mission of mercy! We found your man collapsed outside.”

A string of curses greeted this news. But a short span later the door opened a crack and two pairs of suspicious eyes evaluated our habits, our shaven heads and bare feet, and the pale, unresponsive face of Sherik’s victim. Thereafter came a rattling of bolts and the groan of unwilling hinges. The two guards motioned us in
side. Sherik’s long arms shot out and smashed their heads together.

I dropped to one knee. “You cracked this one’s skull.”

“Thin bones,” grunted Sherik, sounding entirely unapologetic. “Heal him, but don’t wake him.”

“No danger of that.” I touched the man nevertheless.

Ahead of us, the interior courtyard was a gloomy wilderness bathed in isolated pools of light of by argan-oil lanterns, some of which had been allowed to gutter. It must have been a pretty garden once, but the climbing violet-brindels and pungent old-man’s saffron had been allowed to grow wild, before being hacked back in a fit of haphazard gusto and no apparent skill. Crates and boxes were stacked high in all corners, as was the filth and rubbish around them. All this suited us well. We stole through the deeper shadows toward the sounds of music and laughter, and soon found ourselves alongside a set of rooms rudely boarded together where the servant quarters must have collapsed in the past, judging from the debris. I smelled salikweed and several other narcotics besides.

I pressed my eye to a chink in the wall. The first room was empty. The second contained several scrawny and ill-used women and children, but no-one I recognised. In the third room, a group of eight men
played cards, while two musicians sawed away manfully at their lummericoots in the corner and a third banged unenthusiastically upon a set of triple-drums. I beckoned Sherik.

“Third from right,” I breathed in his ear.

The man matching Lenbis’ description was handsome in a fleshy, over-indulged way, and his rumik, though of an expensive cut, was stained and worn at the edges as though to mark he had once been rich but now was fallen on lean times. A dream-pipe dangled from the corner of his mouth, and as we watched he took a large swig from the bottle in front of him and laid his cards on the table with a flourish.

“Four on the rack!” he shouted. “Anyone beat that?”

With groans and curses, the others tossed in their cards and Lenbis cupped his hand over a small mound of coins.

“Hajik Hounds, boss, you won at last!”

“Got to give you miserable thieves some practice at Serka,” said Lenbis.

“Another round?”

“Na.” He cursed fluidly and heaved himself up from the chair, coiling a heavy leather jatha-whip between his hands as he rose. “Got that wench next door. If she doesn’t do her work this time I swear I’ll leave such a pattern on her flesh … like this! Gah!”

Lenbis cracked the whip across the table, sending cards flying. The men flinched.

Sherik tugged my arm. “Here. Look.”

As one man we bent to a cracked panel peered in
to the next room.

That scene I
will never forget. Along the wall nearest us stood a heavy metal-frame bed. In the dingy lamplight we saw a woman lying thereon, curled into a foetal position. The bedclothes were filthy, liberally smeared with excrement, vomit, and blood. Her rags were torn in a dozen places. Beside her lay an infant of less than a season’s age, exhausted beyond squalling, soiled and bruised, mewling like a kitten as it weakly sought its mother’s breast. A girl of perhaps three or four anna sat on the bed’s end, very still, and her hair was matted and filthy. She watched the door with the wariness of a hurt animal. Everything about her bearing suggested fear and misery.

Lenbis kicked open the door and staggered inside. The girl gave a tiny shriek and dived beneath the bed. “Get up!” he roared, struggling to unbutton his trousers. “Get up, you stupid, lazy
…
narkik!
”

Stirring, the woman moaned. We heard a clink. I saw
she wore a thick metal collar. It was chained to the bed-frame.

The whip whistled through the air and snappe
d across the small of her back. An invisible hand plucked the cloth. From that spot, a red stain welled up instantly. Her mouth opened, but the sound she made was more a gargle than a scream, an animalistic noise. I had never heard a person make such a sound, and looked at my companion. Sherik concentrated on the scene. Sword in hand, he had the point up near his eye. As it caught the lamplight it glinted evilly at me. I had once sworn never to use a sword again. But now I deliberately drew mine too.

Lenbis bent over the lamp. Turned it up. Then he stumped over to the bed and jerked off the bedclothes. He hoisted the infant by one leg and tossed it casually onto the floor.

“Whelp of a goat!” he snarled.

Again Lailla opened her mouth, and now, in the brighter light, I saw what I had missed before. She had no tongue. The bastard must have cut it out.

Beside my ear, Sherik growled a phrase he had definitely not learned living amongst monks.

Lenbis was up on the bed now, close to our hiding place.
Suddenly metal screeched against wood, right by my cheek, and I jerked my head back in shock. Within there came a squeal of pain, identical to the squeal a porker makes when branded by a farmer. I saw Sherik’s sword buried hilt-deep in the wood panelling.

He yanked it out, now red-tipped. “Come!”

We ran. Lenbis’ bellows had stopped the music. We burst into the card-room and startled the men there with their swords half-drawn. Sherik was a man possessed. He laid into them mercilessly, his fearsome sword-strokes splattering gore across the walls. Some monk! I was swept along in his wake, killing a would-be backstabber, charging one of the musicians and breaking his own lummericoot across his throat. They were intoxicated to a man, befuddled with drugs and drink, and stood little chance against us.

In a moment we barged into the next room, bloodied and panting, and faced off against Lenbis, naked from the waist down and
clutching a small dagger. He must have read his fate in our grim scowls, in our raised swords and blood-splattered habits.

“Who
… who are you?” he quavered.

“Lailla’s father.”

Lenbis groaned. His bowels opened involuntarily, spraying down his legs. I was just about to cry out in disgust, when with startling speed Lenbis turned the dagger to his own throat and slashed it–badly, but mortally.