by Fuad Baloch
Something skittered past her feet. She jumped, startled by the sudden movement. A nocturnal animal of some sort. Ruma chewed on her lower lip, recalling the desert snakes that only came out in the night and the poison the Kapuri siblings used to keep them away.
She didn’t have a strong immune system, and she sure as hell didn’t want to try out the antidotes of this blasted era if she did get bit.
The realisation helped her come to a decision.
“Straight ahead,” Ruma growled. Then, balancing the sword with both hands, she motioned them to drop to a half crouch and approach the rocky hills.
On and on they crept, fearing they’d be discovered at each step. No shouts came. No arrows flew. Still, Ruma kept a wary lookout for moving silhouettes in the hills.
“They must have gotten the tablet,” whispered Yenita, the words feeling like a shout in the quiet.
“Shh!” hissed Ruma, pausing to see if the words elicited any movement.
Nothing.
They were at the hills now. Her eyes fell on a rock jutting out ten degrees to her left, forming a ledge over rocky ground. Ruma pointed at it, began crawling towards it.
Yenita sneezed. Ruma hissed and turned around. Sivan opened his jaw, slipped, fell noisily. Ruma jumped, waved the sword around, her heart threatening to burst out of her chest.
No one approached them. The hills remained dead, quiet.
If the Blessed had been here, it looked like they had left.
The Blessed! Ruma scoffed, spat to the side. More like the original Misguided. Pathetic fracking pieces of shit that needed to be quashed the moment they were birthed by their unknowing mothers.
When they arrived at the smooth wall, Sivan collapsed against it, his eyes falling shut. With a groan, Yenita joined Ruma as they turned west, towards Fanima burning in the distance.
For long minutes, they stood silent, tense, ready in case anything pounced at them from the dark.
Yenita shivered, edged in closer.
Ruma exhaled, her eyes still keeping a wary watch, one hand still clutching the sword. She didn’t say anything when Yenita’s fingers found hers.
Twenty-Two
Madness
Ruma remained awake the whole night, her eyes scanning the dark horizon, the sword clutched in her hand, her back against the smooth rock wall. Beside her, Yenita slept, her bodycurled up like a baby’s, snoring softly. Sivan had woken up some time ago, offering in a fit of chivalry to trade places with Ruma and take over the watch.
Ruma had scowled at the young man and he’d backed off. He’d pouted for a bit, telling tall tales of how good of a swordsman he was, before his eyes had fallen shut once more.
Exhaling, Ruma turned her eyes to Sivan’s arm. Though he was trying to play brave, she could tell by the way he winced every time he moved his arm that the wound was hurting.
No painkillers or advanced analgesics in this world, of course. Ruma swore. When one got hurt, either they dosed off on narcotics or bore the pain.
A soft whistling sound rose from the east. Startled, Ruma stood up, held out the sword in front. No shadows that she could see. Could it be just the susurrating wind?
She shook her head. Memories of sitting down in the tavern, consuming alcohol and trading stories with the Kapuri siblings, seemed like a dream now. One almost as unreal as a whole life spent amidst the stars.
“Change the world—”
“Shut the frack up!” she growled, not making any effort to keep her voice low. Yenita stirred but didn’t wake up. “I swear if you utter this crap one more time—”
“—and I will take you back to your own world!”
Ruma gritted her teeth so tight the muscles in her jaw protested. She raised the sword. The cold metal shook as her fingers dug into the pommel. If she could only see the fracking Pithrean, she’d gladly sink the blade all the way to the hilt into its ungodly body. But there was no way to kill the shadow, no way to extinguish and—
Ruma blinked, a vague idea forming in her mind. Shadow or not, the Pithrean did have a weakness. One she had already tried using before.
Talk to me, you little fracking piece of shit, she thought.
The Pithrean didn’t reply. Ruma exhaled, hot fury slipping away to cold rationality. If the alien merely resided in her mind, still shielded from her inner thoughts, she might have a way forwards.
Ruma leapt down from the rock cropping, headed west. Her heart thrummed in her chest, the voice so loud it ought to have woken both Kapuri siblings. Without turning to look at them, she marched ahead, her sword hand still raised up high.
Thoughts raced through her mind. She wasn’t one to plot for long. Once an idea took root in her mind, she’d always felt compelled to see it through, no matter the consequences. She half-stumbled in the dark. Wouldn’t be long before the sun started peeking through the horizon, brighter than the fires that had consumed Fanima.
What if she was wrong?
She grinned, slapped her left thigh. “Then no one would be left behind to care.” Though she made light of her fear, it still lingered. There was one advantage, though. Whatever happened to her here would most likely go unanswered. Far from coming up centuries ahead, she doubted even Yenita and Sivan would remember her in a year or two.
Gulatu’s name had survived the ages. More than eight hundred years after his death, people—even those she would have considered objective, militaristically atheist—continued to venerate his name, kept his memory alive by applying his teachings in one way or the other to their lives.
Ruma chuckled. Probably a good thing no one was writing down all small details of her life. A lot of colour perhaps in her younger days, but little of substance afterwards. A bystander to a prophet, not even a footnote when thrust back to his world.
Ruma’s belly growled. How long had she been walking? Then again, what she needed to do didn’t really require a lot of travelling.
“First,” she said, coming to an abrupt stop. “I’ve had it with you and your crap.” She raised the sword. “About time you start listening to me.”
The First didn’t respond.
Not that it mattered.
Ruma smiled, pointed the sharp tip towards her. “Funny things, these sharp metallic objects. On one hand, all they do is pierce weak human flesh. On the other, they somehow also erase the entity my Gulatu calls one’s immortal soul.” She cackled. “I think it’s capable of far much more, though. Far too much…”
The First kept quiet.
“You bastard,” snarled Ruma. “Let’s see how much longer you keep shut.” She drew the sword closer, the sharp edge inching closer, closer towards her face. She felt more than saw the cool metal inches from her eyes. She raised the edge, angling it, until it rested lightly against her temple. “Either you speak to me, or you perish alongside me.”
Ruma inhaled a deep lungful of air and waited. Cool air containing an uncountable number of fine dust particles brushed against her face. She sighed, feeling her resolve shake with each passing second. Facing one’s mortality was meant to dredge up truths from one’s psyche. Yet she’d stood in this position many a time before.
“Fine,” she said. “I did give you a chance.”
Ruma exhaled, pressed the blade against her temple. She winced, gritted her teeth as she felt the blade begin to part the soft flesh beneath it.
“Human!”
“Ruma,” she snarled. “My name is Ruma Nuway, you fracker.”
“Ruma, cease!”
She cackled, still keeping the blade against the temple. “Oh, now you talk.”
“Change the world—”
She increased the pressure on the temple. Though the pain was excruciating, she grinned through it, felt the adrenalin rush through her system.
The First broke away.
Ruma smiled. “Now that we’ve got the niceties all dispensed with, it’s time to give me answers.”
“What do you seek?”
Despite the anger she ought to have fe
lt, the unnaturalness of an alien overlord sitting in her mind and whispering to her set the hairs on her neck and arms on end. “Answers.”
Exhaling, Ruma withdrew the sword an inch, gathered her thoughts. How did one even begin to question a being as powerful as the Pithrean?
“How do I get back to my world?” She paused for a beat, then added, “This time, if you do not respond, I am going to—”
“Through the portal you refer to as the Shard.”
Ruma exhaled. “Why did you bring me here?”
“To change the course of this world.”
Ruma rolled her eyes. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. “Do you really expect me to help you wipe Gulatu Koza from existence?”
“Yes.”
“Why the heck—” Ruma fell silent. Dread pooled in her veins. “What… happened in my world? When I walked away from Gulatu, he was still fighting your kind. He won, didn’t he? Is that why you are stuck with me, hiding from his sight?”
“Human—”
“Ruma!”
“The catalyst didn’t obey his masters and must be disciplined.”
She shook her head, raising a hand. “Hold on! Are you actually saying you want to take… revenge on Gulatu? A being as powerful as you, lords of space and time over two planes of existence, now reduced to a beast’s baser desires?”
“Your actions are already changing the world. Quicken it, and you will return to your world.”
“And what will happen to you?”
Silence.
“First!”
“I shall seek my mates.”
Ruma slapped her thigh again. Could it really be all as simple as this? The last of a species wanting to return to seek members of his race, but only when his enemy had been vanquished?
“What would my world look like if I followed your wishes here?”
“Not much different.”
An answer, but an untruthful one. She could feel it in her bones.
Ruma shuffled her weight, her mind a confusing jumble of thoughts. The sad truth was that she did need his help to get back to her world. The problem was, at what cost?
“What do you want me to do here?”
The First didn’t respond.
Ruma cursed, waved the sword about. The Pithrean remained quiet. She considered warning him to answer, then decided the bastard would have lied anyway.
What was clear, though, was his desire to have her disrupt the narrative of history. Again, her frustration rose at not knowing how history had unfolded so she could know what she needed to watch out for.
One thing was clear—she had to guard the secrets of the future from these people. Beyond that, though, could she really go on stumbling from one disaster to the next as a mere bystander?
What if the future had turned out the way it had because she’d had a part in helping the right version of the faith to prosper? If she was indeed back in time, then her actions here had already happened, in a manner of speaking, in her past, the world’s future. Wasn’t that how the arrow of time was meant to travel?
What did she know about her world?
The Misguided hadn’t been completely eradicated. But still they weren’t the ascendant theology, having lost the higher ground to the more peaceful strands of the Alfi faith. If she had to match her world with the dominant schools of thought here, the Misguided aligned with the Blessed, and the more pragmatic groups with the woman who led the Traditionalists.
That seemed simple enough, but if the Traditionalist had likely won out in the end, how come the temples still venerated the Lady, someone Ruma had always assumed to be the prophet’s wife? She tried recalling Bubraza’s face, then shook her head, deciding there was definitely no resemblance there.
Maybe, over time, Bubraza’s followers had whitewashed history once they had triumphed, decided to revise a painful part of their civil war, giving the Lady a makeover? After all, the Yasmeen she saw was hardly the one she’d heard about both from history books and the prophet’s lips.
The more she thought, the more confused she grew. The simple fact of the matter was that she was simply incapable of thinking all this through even if she had a whole lifetime of thinking ahead.
Another cursed realisation materialised. Why was she even bothering with these questions? Wasn’t her mission to simply get out of here, without caring for this world’s travails and conflicts?
She clenched her fingers, felt the cold, unyielding metal in her left hand. The urge rose to tear her hair out in frustration, scream until her lungs were hoarse and until things were nice and simple. Hers was the mind of a mechanic. One tuned to finding straightforward issues and hacks once problems arose. Those like Gulatu were most welcome to take on the philosophising duties as far as she was concerned.
Another possibility reared its head. One scarier than any she had conceived so far.
The First seemed to know her obstinate nature. Was he appealing to her to change the course of history as a way of ensuring she didn’t? Could it be possible she, or another version of her—she shrugged the awful ramifications of the thought—had helped the right party to prevail here once, and that was what the First wanted to prevent?
“Argh!” she snarled, giving up on that train of thought. “First, I’m going to kill you. You do know that, right?”
She was just as lost now as she had been before wasting her time with the Pithrean.
Yet something was taking shape within her. A most unexpected outcome.
Her heart was warming up, bending, twisting, seeking a reason for her being.
She couldn’t just flee without good reason. That wasn’t her nature.
No matter the hows and what-ifs, what mattered was what she felt in the moment. What she wanted to do.
The fanatics had burned the town, possibly killed the little boy and his wounded father.
Could she really just walk away, forget it all in her haste to leave all the terrible memories behind? How had that worked out when she’d tried leaving the prophet?
Vengeance rose through her, pushing down the ache to rush back to her world.
Ruma turned around, finding a strange peace settle within her centre. A pale, reddish orange hue was spreading across the horizon now. How much time had she spent here? Then she squinted. Over at the Mithi hills, silhouettes were moving, accompanied by fluttering pennants.
Ruma snarled, then broke into a sprint.
Twenty-Three
The False Dawns…
Holding the sword out in front, out of breath, Ruma arrived at their campsite just as the first rays of sunlight tore through the dark night. Three bearded figures turned towards her. Two of them brandished curved swords. The third remained bent, running his fingers over footsteps in the sand.
“Step away!” she bellowed, inching closer warily.
“Who are you, woman?” asked the one to her left. A tall man, the muscled cords on his neck and forearm clenching as he exchanged a glance with his companion.
Ruma glared. “What have you done with my companions?”
“We could ask you the same question, deviant,” declared the third man. He rose, his eyes narrowing. “Have they gone with the booty?”
Ruma blinked, shifted her weight. On instinct, she glanced left and right to ensure she wouldn’t get outflanked. Just the four of them. But to the right, behind the hill, she could hear the snorts of horses and muffled voices of men. “What the frack are you on about?”
“You and your fellow fanatics attacked the peaceful folk of Fanima, took their valuables, and then… It’s quite possible you peeled off from the main horde lest you were asked to share your booty.” The third man took a menacing step forwards, one hand falling down towards the dagger hooked onto his waist belt. “Do you deny it?”
Ruma opened her jaw. “You’re… not with the Blessed.”
“You should know, heretic.”
“I am not with Yasmeen,” she replied hotly, then jabbed her sword at the air between them
. “What did you do to my companions?”
The third man, who seemed to be their leader, scoffed. But despite the act, he seemed to consider her words. Leaning to the side, he whispered into the ear of the first man who had engaged her.
“Answer me!” she bellowed. Her temple burned now, blood trickling down her neck where she had nicked herself. If luck held, hopefully, her red hair would hide it well, not let these men think she was injured.
“Swear it upon the name of Alf and His prophet you’re not with the misguided Blessed?”
She gritted her teeth. Did they all have to be so fracking obstinate? “Take my word or not, but keep the divine away from my life.”
He narrowed his lips. “You’re a foreigner so I will excuse your tongue but—”
She took a step forwards, pointed her sword at him. “Where… are… my… companions?”
“From the direction of the footsteps,” said the man carefully, “looks like they made off towards the town.”
“Fanima?”
“Its charred remains, aye.”
“But…” Ruma shook her head, then turned around. “Then they are heading straight into Yasmeen’s dogs. I’ve got to go warn them.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. The heretics dispersed like the morning dew in Ghal when they saw us approach.”
Ruma considered the words. She didn’t know how many of Yasmeen’s soldiers had assaulted the town or how strong this party was, but if the bastards had been at it the whole night, they might not have wanted to meet a real opposition.
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?” she asked.
“A believer’s word should be enough.”
Throwing her head back, she laughed, a deep bellicose rumble from the belly. “The worth of a believer’s words is less than soiled underwear.”
The men gasped. Sensing their change in mood, Ruma twirled around, the sword still held out in front. Her blood still ran hot, her thoughts a mushy mess after the useless chat with the First, the after-effects of the obscene amount she had drunk still clouding her judgement to a degree, and now this blasted mess on top.