The Return of the Arinn

by Frank P. Ryan

  Padraig lifted his hand and waved: ‘Goodbye Mark – Nan!’

  Mark’s lips formed the word he was no longer capable of speaking: Goodbye! But what was in a word that could not be expressed in a final exchange of glances.

  Cal’s face was the last image to fix itself into Mark’s vision, into his memory: Cal’s need meeting his, pain for pain, anger for anger. Mark activated his power through the triangle in his brow. In that moment he heard the enclosing mind, demanding of him and of Nan both:

 

  For Kehloke

  A plague on her! A plague on the pox-faced harridan!

  Snakoil Kawkaw scratched obsessively at his chin with the hook, gazing down onto the two urchins squatting in the sand.

  Fish-gutter!

  The Preceptress’ derogatory dismissal of him! Was that what he amounted to? Was it all that he, in his wild and adventurous life, added up to? A piece of flotsam to be abandoned to the cesspit of history?

  His heart palpitated. He was lost in rage for a moment or two, his breath huffing and puffing through his clenched jaws. Again and again had he found himself harking back to that conversation he had overheard from outside the slit opening of his irascible mistress’ tent, this priestess to the great loser, Tyrant of the Wastelands, since waste was what his vaunted capital had been reduced to.

  ‘This witch-urchin from another world? Beloved Master! It will be my heart’s desire to see her dead!’

  How closely he had listened, even though he had heard nothing of the other side of the conversation. But it had proved easy to read it from her sycophantic replies. The black dagger would see the huloima, the one called Mo, dead.

  ‘You would kill the huloima? When she has an amulet of power she wears on a thong around her throat? When she is guarded by a most ferocious Shee-witch, who sticks closer to her than a shadow?’

  ‘You had better find a way.’

  She would take all the credit for it: meanwhile Kawkaw would take all the risk. He had spat the words at her: ‘What about me? My life?’

  ‘What matters your miserable self against the Master’s interest!’

  She thought herself so clever. That execrable bitch with her red-veined eyes! That sycophantic venerator, with her obsessive kissing of the sigil!

  Formidable lady? Formidable my arse!

  And yet her words, and their insinuation, continued to haunt him: ‘A power that is not for your hairy ears, bear-man!’

  Me she threatens, when I would rip her black heart out!

  He must somehow calm himself. Have a care for oneself, Snakoil Kawkaw, in such a perilous situation!

  Appraising the pair of urchins, he was still struggled to control his rage and think clearly. The girl must have read the rage in his eyes.

  ‘Please, Mister – we does wot you says!’

  Kawkaw panted again, thinking back. Oh, she might look very different these days but he remembered everything of that brat called Mo. She had always been so strange. He recalled his agony, the very day the Storm Wolves had severed his arm. He rememberd how, driven to distraction with her whining, he had kicked out at her. But he had felt no weight at all on the end of his boot. There had also been that devilish cowl of spider’s web about her, that same covering that had cloaked all four of the huloimas when they had appeared out of the wilderness at the ice-bound lake. Siam had failed to recognise the danger they bore. Siam the stupid, who had stolen his lovely Kehloke, provoking her into rejecting him – condemning poor Snakoil Kawkaw to a lifetime of loveless wandering.

  ‘A plague on the bitch! May it rot her conspiring heart!’

  ‘Please, Mister? Don’t be angry wiv us!’

  ‘Shut your gob and let me think. There is something you can do for me. You must do it exactly as I tell you.’

  ‘Yeah, Mister. We does it, honest!’

  What else was the weasel going to say? He could make out a scar on her eyelid where her stye had been. The huloima brat, Mo – what trouble she had taken over this urchin! He had to make sure the urchin didn’t betray him out of gratitude. He slapped her, hard, knocking her to the sandy ground, next to her bawling brother. Even so, her dazed eyes looked up at her brother, protectively. Oh, without doubt, the mute was the weakness he must fix on here!

  ‘Him – this piece of shite – he must fall down and look like he’s dying.’

  She was snivelling from the blow. ‘I’ll tell ’im. ’E will, Mister. Honest, ’e will.’

  ‘And you will draw the attention of the huloima to your distress – the one called Mo, who has been looking after you.’

  A hesitation now in those miserable eyes. A quiver in her voice, ‘Yes.’

  He reached out with his hook and he brought it up under the chin of the mute. He pressed it in hard, drawing blood.

  ‘Your sister better not let me down.’

  The girl answered for him. ‘We won’t. We does like you said, Mister. Me brudder falls down an’ I screams and screams.’

  He rammed the hook deeper for a moment, taking pleasure in the way even a mute could moan. Hah! The blood that now ran down his chin would help.

  He hissed, through teeth clenched so hard he heard one crack. But it was of no matter. He had no time to care about a broken tooth. ‘I’ll be very close behind you. I’ll be watching every move you make.’

  Confound her! Confound Siam the Stupid! Confound them all! Oh, my poor broken love, my poor lost dreams! Yet was the sweetness of revenge still possible? Could it be that he might yet triumph? Old Snakoil Kawkaw, the outcast, the accursed one?

  ‘Hellfire and abomination!’ He loomed over the brats, bloody spit dripping from his broken tooth. He growled: ‘Remember my instructions. Your brother will gobble my blade if you let me down.’

  She nodded, too terrified now even to speak. Kawkaw saw the snot run down over the sister’s lip. That was how to control the brats. That was how to make sure they did what you wanted them to.

  Yet still Kawkaw’s heart raged. He couldn’t stop himself scratching distractedly at his own chin with the point of the hook, drawing still more blood. Spit rose in his throat at the memory the Preceptress’ insults. Bear-man, fish-gutter, feral, sub-human! That was him. But it was also Siam the Stupid, and . . . and his beloved Kehloke!

  A plague on her black heart and soul . . .

  *

  Within her tent on the sea shore before the vast blazing canker of Ghork Mega, Mira waited. Sleep had been impossible through the night. She had spent it squatting within the enfolding arc of her Shee guardian, Usrua, her legs crossed at the ankles, her arms drawn up to support her head where it was nestled down onto her chest. Above Mira’s head the guardian star of Magtokk, the True Believer, hovered in a second protective vigil. Beyond the tent, and hovering higher still, yet in a perfect alignment with girl and star, the great eagle, Thesau, hovered. All waited in a perfect repose for the Great Cycle to begin.

  That she was changing, had already changed, no longer frightened Mira. She accepted her metamorphosis. Quite what that would finally entail she wasn’t altogether sure. When she was small, Mark had told her a story he had invented in which they were birds of prey. Instead of being hunted, they were the hunters. Mira recalled the feeling of changing from hunted to hunter. But it wasn’t the fierce cruelty of the hunter that had impressed her then. It had been the notion of change. Metamorphosis, as she was now experiencing it, overwhelming, all-embracing. It could not be explained in words. It had to be experienced.

  Mo heard the voice of the True Believer, tinkling like a bell inside her mind: You must make ready for the ceremony . . .

  She took a tight hold of the twin powers that dangled on the thong around her neck, the talisman, given to her by Padraig and the Torus that was the legacy of her birth mother, Mala.

  Would you know your destiny?

 
She whispered: ‘Yes.’

  Lifting her head, she was aware of the looming forces that linked her with the omens in the heavens above the encampment, next to the dying city.

  What was light would become dark: what was dark would become light. It would manifest in the crystals of chardizz. The Great Event: the omega becoming alpha. The cycle was necessary for the Universe to exist. It was what enabled all to come from nothing. There would be an instant in which time, and with it creation, would stand still, as the old cycle ended and the new cycle began. That critical moment was fast approaching. Her place was not here but in a perfect communion with the power that was dawning deep underground, in the Valley of the Pyramids. The immensity of it, the awful implications of it, flooded her being. Thesau, the eagle, sensed it and stiffened in its cruciate shape high above. The star above her head sensed it and issued a single pulse. And then there was a scream – a dreadful scream, the high-pitched shriek of terror that could only emanate from a child.

  Moonrise was screaming.

  Mo heard her scream even as the gimlet eyes of Thesau pinpointed its source, within the scrabble of boxes and shanties of the camp followers.

  Moonrise needs me!

  Mo fingered the Torus on its chord. She saw a cluster of figures in the crepuscular shadows just before the dawn.

  Moonrise screamed again.

  Mo opened her mind to the needful child. In the mind of Moonrise Mo saw her own face. She searched further, quickly, urgently. Through the eyes of Thesau she saw the limp figure of the small boy, Moonrise’s brother, Hsst. There was blood spilling down from his throat and onto his chest.

  It is too close to the moment.

  Mo sensed Magtokk’s warning, but Moonrise’s scream had carried such terror with it that it evoked memories of Mo’s own tormented childhood. There was no question of her ignoring Moonrise’s need.

  She thought: I am following the vision in the mind of the eagle. I am there already. She manifested within a cluster of three figures, the two children and a bedraggled wretch of a woman, perhaps a camp follower. The woman was kneeling by the side of the children, comforting them. She was also calling for help.

  ‘The little boy is badly hurt. Oh, the poor little mite!’

  Mira reflected: I am no longer Mo Grimstone.

  Even so, even though the immensity was summoning her to the Valley of the Pyramids, she was unable to refuse Moonrise’s call for help.

  *

  Kawkaw hung back within the shadows, seething with anger and resentment. He could make out the group of them through the feeble light of dawn – the brats and the priestess – heightened by the glitter of the sigil in the hilt of the harridan’s dagger. The act of killing the huloima was sure to have repercussions. The Shee guardian would kill them both. It confirmed her stupidity. The stupid prostrated themselves before the gods, but in his experience the gods did not listen. Go, now, Snakoil Kawkaw. Flee this doomed situation. Let her get on with it. Let her pay the price. Let them both die. What did it matter to him now? But then the rage rose in him again. It appalled him that there would be no recompense for the tribulations he had undergone. None whatsoever!

  What piece of shit have I become?

  An instrument, stupid Kawkaw, of her beloved Master . . .

  The huloima called Mo was approaching the trap. She had appeared out of nowhere. How strange she truly was, stranger even than he remembered her! So tall now – taller than most women. Perhaps even as tall as Kawkaw himself. And how her face had changed, become elongated and delicate, with those hazel eyes aglow, like an elfin princess.

  He heard her words: ‘Oh, Moonrise – is Hsst injured?’

  Look into the brat’s eyes, stupid. Kawkaw reeled at the stupidity of women. See the terror there, you moronic girl!

  The Preceptress was playing her part with concealed glee. ‘Oh, Mistress – thank goodness you are here. The poor mite – I fear there is no hope.’

  Kawkaw heard her wheedling voice masking the shifting of her black-bladed dagger underneath the rags. No hope indeed!

  He glanced around. Where was the Shee guardian who never left the huloima’s side? Were they so stupid they didn’t realise that she would kill the huloima, Mo, and then she would strike out at everyone within her vicinity?

  In his dreams, night after night, he had relished the thought of killing his tormentor. He had enacted the killing in such perfect slow detail that when he wakened, he was surprised she was still alive.

  You must kill her now.

  Why – why would I kill her?

  You know. You know why all is lost. You know why all is confusion.

  It was that thing he had overheard, confirming what she had said to him on so many other occasions, something so wicked he hardly dared to think through to the implications. It was during that final conversation between the Preceptress and her beloved Master. She had turned to glare at him, her dagger charged with a terrible new malice, such a look of triumph on her face before she pressed the dagger to her lips. He had seen in that look that she was no longer interested in his arguments. And somewhere in the argument that had raged anew between them her fateful words . . .

  ‘This pathetic world will be replaced by a more perfect one. Why do you think the Master has allowed His city to fall? Do you think there will be a place for fish gutters like you in that perfect world?’

  No place for fish gutters like you . . .

  No place for the Olhyiu – the Children of the Sea!

  He was shaking.

  No place for his beloved Kehloke . . . the woman he loved. He knew she was here, somewhere in the vast conglomerations of camps on the beach. She was close again, so nearly approachable. He had dreamed of proving himself worthy of her. He had dreamed of taking her out of the arms of the stupid Siam and making her his bride, of covering her with jewels to make her his princess.

  No! No! Noooooooo!

  He saw the Preceptress begin to move, that cunning face made grimy with charcoal to play the part of an Olhyiu beggar. The hand under the rags tensed around the hilt of the dagger . . .

  Rage drove him. She was so preoccupied with timing that she had forgotten old Snakoil Kawkaw. She was unaware of him until she felt his right fist close around her hair from behind and his hook rip into her throat. He cut deep, to the grinding core of bone, and he tore out all in between, blood and cartilage, muscle and sinew, with savagery. But she had an endurance that went beyond the grave. Her head spun on the exposed bones of her neck, and like the strike of a snake, she thrust the black-bladed dagger into Kawkaw’s heart.

  The Shee witch had arrived too late, the tigress snatching the head of the Preceptress from her neck with a single bite. In his dying moments he watched the tigress shake the headless Preceptress from side to side, as if she were a rag doll, before those terrible claws began to rip and sunder her body, reducing it to blood and shreds.

  As if floating, Kawkaw fell to the ground and felt the rage leak out of him. There was consolation in the fact that the Preceptress was dead. He could see the huloima brats being hurried away by the giant monkey. No one was concerned about him. No one gave a damn that it was Snakoil Kawkaw who had confounded the Tyrant’s malice. Even as the darkness closed about him, there was no glance at him in any of their eyes. Not even when he was dying here in the dirt, like a dog . . . Like a tinker’s cur . . .

  *

  As the giant eagle descended out of the twilight, Alan rushed towards it with the Spear of Lug blazing with runes in his right hand. Magtokk also headed towards its swooping form, carrying two small children in his arms. ‘Have no fear. It is a True Believer. Its name is Thesau.’

  Kate had joined Alan. ‘What’s happening?’

  Magtokk called out: ‘Look upon the scene not through your human eyes but through your oracula.’

  They did so.

  Myriad stars were
descending out of the dawn sky. They wheeled and spun around the eagle as it beat its great wings in order to make a landing. Then the stars began to form a spiral around it.

  Alan pressed Magtokk: ‘What’s happening?’

  That enormous face, with its huge plates of cheeks and the deep mahogany eyes turned from the sky to smile at Alan and Kate. ‘The True Believers are coming for Mira, and you too, Alan and Kate. But first, Kate, if you could spare a moment. There’s a little one who might benefit from your healing powers.’

  The Spindle

  Mira looked around her with wonder at an indigo sky holding thousands – perhaps tens, or even hundreds of thousands – of wheeling and spiralling stars. She thought: I have entered the weave of the Akkharu.

  She felt the comfort of Magtokk’s voice and the presence of Thesau as stars on either side of her.

  She thought: I know. I must close my eyes, close all of my senses.

 

  Mo had found herself back in the enormous chamber below the labyrinth in the Valley of the Pyramids. It had taken her several moments to acclimatise to the dazzling light that shone from the floor, as if it were the up-curved circumference of a sun.

  What must I do?

 

  She had been thrilled by the experience of consummation, and then communion. The vast weave of black crystalline filaments became one with her senses, so she flowed with them through the vastness of space.

  I feel it, the first ripple of the Change . . . the Great Cycle . . . What happens now? What am I to do?

 

  What judgement?

 

  *

  Alan attempted to wake up but he failed to do so. His failure infuriated him, but no matter how hard he tried to overcome it, he continued to fail. The experience made him suspect that his consciousness, his will, was being manipulated.