Two days later, Talsy looked up from the accounts on her desk as her doorway darkened. King Garsh's black-clad advisor stood framed in it, and she rose to her feet, her heart hammering with fury.
"Get out! How dare you come here?"
Yusan raised his hands. "I know you don't like me, but I need to know more about what you said."
"I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, now get out!"
The advisor sidled into her office. "Tell me more about the Hashon Jahar. How do you know they're undying?"
"The King sent you, didn't he? Getting worried now that the Black Riders are on his doorstep, is he?" she sneered.
"Did the Mujar tell you about the Black Riders?"
"Why don't you go and ask him?"
Yusan turned away and ran a hand through his hair. "It wasn't my idea to throw -"
"But you went along with it!"
"I obeyed my king."
"As you are now."
"Yes!" he snarled, swinging back to face her. "The King can have you tortured if he wants, so just tell me!"
Talsy went cold and settled back into her chair. "I've told you what I know."
"Tell me again." Yusan pulled up a chair and sat forward with eager eyes.
"They're of this world, and they're undying."
"There's more to it than that."
"That's all I know," she snapped.
"How can they be stopped?"
Talsy smiled. "By a Mujar."
"Like Horran."
"Precisely."
"Was that your Mujar?"
Her eyes burnt at the mention of Chanter. "Yes."
"Why did he do it?"
"They made him."
"How?"
His persistent, snapped questions annoyed her. "What difference does it make? You don't have a Mujar here."
"Maybe we can find one."
"Why don't you go and dredge up the one you threw in the sea?"
"Perhaps we will."
Ridiculous hope flared in her, then died. "You'll never find him."
"We can get one from a Pit."
Talsy sat back. "Then try." She hesitated. "Why didn't you throw Chanter in a Pit? Why did you throw him in the sea?"
Yusan looked away, gnawing his lip. "The nearest Pit is many hundreds of leagues from here, and the Hashon Jahar had already cut us off from it."
"So, you knew then that the threat was approaching."
"No, they were passing by, heading west."
She smiled. "And now they're coming here. So, you can't rescue one from a Pit to save you, and Chanter is lost in the sea."
"What are the Hashon Jahar?"
"I've just told you."
"Not men?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Mujar."
"Mujar don't kill."
Yusan grunted. "Then what are they, and how can they be stopped? Why do they attack Truemen cities?"
"I don't know."
The advisor jumped up and paced about. "You seemed to know a lot the day we captured the Mujar, now you know nothing. You implied that if we hadn't thrown them into the Pits, the Mujar would have protected us from the Hashon Jahar."
She shrugged. "Maybe they would."
"If Rashkar falls, you'll die too."
"I know. But you took away my reason for living when you threw Chanter into the sea."
He glanced around. "You've done well for yourself. I'd say you have a reason to live."
"Bits of metal, wood and cloth. The Black Riders can burn it all."
"It's strange, the effect a Mujar can have on a person," he mused, stroking his chin. "I've seen it before."
Talsy's eyes narrowed. "It happened to you, didn't it? That's how you know about them."
"Yes, one tried to twist my mind."
"What happened to him?"
Yusan turned to stare out of the window. "I saw to it that he was thrown into a Pit."
"Of course, I should have guessed. Few Truemen have the ability to understand Mujar. Perhaps I'm the only one."
"No, there have been others. They withered away when they lost their Mujar to a Pit." His eyes raked her. "Just as you're doing."
She nodded. "It's hard to live in a world ruled by selfish savages when one has met a truly good being. At least they saw the light. At least they had that wonderful experience."
Yusan snorted and marched out.
"As you did!" she shouted after him, then slumped over her desk and buried her face in her hands.
The next day, the first refugees arrived from Jishan. Ships ferried scores of women, children and old men in a constant stream across the Narrow Sea. The returning vessels took young, scared recruits to die defending Jishan. King Garsh kept his seasoned troops to defend Rashkar. He obviously did not hold out much hope of saving the stone city. Many seemed to think, quite rightly, that Rashkar was doomed too, and fled. Some sailed up the Narrow Sea to towns along the coast, others headed inland aboard wagons. Talsy was of the opinion that trying to flee the Hashon Jahar was like trying to outrun an avalanche on a mountain slope. She did not really know why she waited. While she had no wish to die, she could not leave Chanter behind. When they arrived, she would probably panic and try to escape, but until then, she would wait.
Two days later, the Black Riders laid siege to Jishan, which fell within hours. Sailors brought the news, along with a few soldiers they had fished out of the sea. Even Talsy was surprised. She had thought that Jishan, with its mighty walls, would hold out for a few days. The soldiers brought puzzling stories of the Hashon Jahar, claiming that they were men with twisted faces who could be killed, and that Jishan's stone walls had melted away like hot wax before them.
The strangest news of all was that, the day after they had reduced Jishan to rubble, the Black Riders had vanished. Most people maintained that the Riders had retreated over the mountains; others said that they marched up the coast, but coastal ships saw no sign of them. Talsy knew that the Hashon Jahar moved fast, but she could not understand how they could disappear so quickly.
A strange foreboding filled her, and she grew restless, tossed in her sleep at night and woke bleary-eyed and haggard. In her dreams, Chanter haunted her as he had never done before, urging her to flee the city.
Three days after Jishan fell, her restiveness peaked, and by noon she could bear her jitters no longer, so she closed the shop and headed home. There she dressed in tough leather leggings, strong boots, a linen shirt and a sturdy jacket. She packed a warm fur coat, tent and bedroll, dried food and pots into a bag. At the stables where she kept two riding horses, she selected the sturdier animal and ordered a groom to saddle him.
The guards at the city gates eyed her strange outfit when she rode past. Since the Hashon Jahar had vanished, the panic in Rashkar had abated, and life was almost normal. Talsy urged the horse into a canter and headed up the coast to a beach she frequented in her search for Chanter. Away from the city, her anxiety subsided, and she dismounted, tied the horse to a tree and wandered along the beach.
Waves pounded the sand with the steady rhythm of the ocean swells; gulls mewed as they rode the wind. She collected sand-washed shells, then threw them away and resorted to building sand castles. When the rising tide washed them away, she contemplated going home, but the thought did not appeal to her. Instead, she lighted a fire and cooked a meagre meal of bacon, corn and journey bread, picnicking on the shore as the sun set in a glorious medley of glowing clouds.
A distant roaring distracted her, and she looked at Rashkar, surprised by the amount of smoke rising from the city. Fires dotted the waterfront and dock area and spread into the warehouses that lined the wharf. The conflagration’s roar grew louder, and the screams and shouts of terrified people mingled with the clanging of alarm bells and rumble of hooves and feet.
Talsy squinted at the distant city, wishing she had a spyglass. Something black emerged from the sea like a creeping carpet of shadow, engulfed the docks and filtered into the city. Flames leapt in
its wake, and a line of defenders tried to stem the sable tide. Talsy swallowed bile. So that was where the Black Riders had gone. Not over the mountains or up the coast.
The Hashon Jahar rode out of the sea. They swarmed into the city, unhindered by the walls that faced the landward side, and even Garsh's mighty army could not hold them back. Talsy sat on the warm sand and watched the city fall. In the gathering dusk, the ragged line of torch-bearing defenders marked the invaders’ progress, retreating before them. War drums boomed, summoning soldiers to fight, and trumpets bleated as officers tried to rally them.
The world seemed to become still and hushed as the cries of dying people carried on the wind. Talsy shivered, not only because of the frigid wind that blew in from the sea, but with horror at the carnage. As the number of torch-bearing defenders dwindled, lights fled the city like fireflies leaving a nest, filling the two coastal roads with streams of sparkles.
Within a few hours, the mighty city of Rashkar fell, the roads out of it clogged with terrified citizens. The Black Riders swarmed after them in a pitiless tide, snuffing out the torches along with the lives of those who bore them. The shadowy advance spread up the roads, extinguishing even the occasional twinkling light that broke away and headed into the wilderness. By midnight, the last few distant lights vanished, plunging the land into darkness, save for the garish flames of the burning city. As the fires died, a distant rumbling carried on the breeze, along with the stench of smoke and burning flesh.
By the time the chill morning dew fell in a gentle haze, silence had descended upon the land. The first rays of dawn lighted a scene of utter devastation. A jumble of fallen walls and smouldering timbers lay under a pall of black smoke. Nothing remained of mighty Rashkar, capital of Manshur and seat of King Garsh's throne, but rubble. As the gathering light crept across the land, Talsy mounted and rode along the beach to a cave she had discovered on her earlier visits to the beach. There, she unsaddled the horse and tethered it, setting up a camp on the shelving rock. Being above the high water mark, the cave would make a dry home. Something told her that she was safe here, hidden from the Hashon Jahar. Shock and exhaustion forced her into an uneasy sleep.
When Talsy woke, the sun was past noon, and she went out to study the ruined city, which the Hashon Jahar’s black mass still filled. Smoke rose in lazy spirals, and the harbour was empty, the ships sunk or fled. An hour later, the Black Riders mounted their steeds and formed into their four-abreast columns. Two black lines emerged, one heading away, the other towards her, and she experienced a twinge of fear.
They rode along the coastal road, a mere two miles inland, too close for comfort. She contemplated staying to watch them pass, longing for a better look at them, but resisted the dangerous temptation and retreated into the cave. Within its cool confines, she listened to the approaching thunder of their steeds' hooves, remembering Horran. Harness and armour jingled and clinked. The steeds snorted, but the Black Riders rode in silence, apart from the rumble of galloping hooves.
Talsy’s heart thudded as they drew closer and passed by, and her horse tossed his head and rolled his eyes. She decided that if they discovered her, she would run into the sea, for she would rather drown than be torn apart. The thunder of their passage seemed to go on all afternoon. Their numbers must have been in tens of thousands, and it was only half of them. When at last the rumble faded, she ran outside to watch the last of them ride away at a full gallop. Rashkar was a sprawling mass of rubble and ashes. Amid the debris were the bodies of tens of thousands of people, yet she shed no tears for them. Perhaps she was so much like a Mujar now that she had even become as uncaring as one, she mused.
The following day, scavengers arrived in the form of clouds of crows, gulls and vultures, packs of wild dogs and wolves. A ship sailed up to the harbour, turned and headed along the coast. She did not doubt that whatever town had sent it would be massacred before the ship returned, so she resisted the urge to run onto the beach and wave to try to flag it down, for she was safer here now. Several ships came and went over the next few days, then no more arrived. After a week, the carrion-eaters left the remnants for the maggots and worms.
Each day, she took her horse out to let him graze, noticing that many horses had survived the battle and wandered around the city. Some still wore harness, and these she caught and divested of their badges of slavery. A few were injured, and she tended their wounds as well as she could. After a while, she realised that she did not need the beast she kept and released him to run with the others, since she could always catch him again if she needed.
As the weeks passed, her supplies ran out, so she resorted to fishing and hunting game for the pot. The cultivated lands filled with weeds and grass, but she found vegetables to dig up. She was occupied with this one day when a lone rider approached the city and stopped to stare at the ruins for several minutes. He turned his horse away, then spotted her and rode over.
"When did Rashkar fall?" he asked, as he reined in his horse.
She looked up at a rather plump man, pale now with shock. "About three weeks ago."
"How long was the battle?"
"About half a day."
He paled further. "How's that possible? Rashkar had the mightiest army in the land."
"They came out of the sea."
"Black Riders?"
She nodded.
"On ships?"
"No, they rode out of the sea."
He gaped at her, and Talsy turned away to continue her digging
He dismounted. "How did you survive?"
"I wasn't in the city. I was on the beach."
The man gazed at the sea, his expression dazed and hopeless. "All the great cities are falling. Jishan, Rashkar, Margan, Lorton, Vishnar, Horran…"
She looked up. "Horran's fallen?"
"Two months ago. Is that where you're from?"
"No. I passed through there." She dug up a potato and added it to her pile. The man watched her with hungry eyes.
"I could sure do with a good meal."
"Sorry." She shook her head. "I only have enough for myself."
"I could take you to a town."
"What for? It's safer here."
"I suppose you're right. Don't you get lonely?"
"No." She shot him a frown. "Be on your way, mister. If you need a fresh mount, there are plenty wandering around. Take your pick, no one owns them anymore."
The rider took the hint, caught a fresh horse and rode away.
Another month passed in an endless routine of fishing or hunting, digging vegetables and cooking simple meals. In between, she sat on the beach and stared out to sea, lost in memories of the gentle man who had been her companion and friend. She missed him terribly, and cursed the hateful people who had condemned him to a living death because he was different.
Two months after Rashkar's fall, weird creatures emerged from the sea to sun themselves on the beach. The beasts had rainbow skins, frond-like fins and fin-tipped tails. They slipped back into the ocean when she approached, but more and more of them appeared, gathering at times to sing strange moaning songs. Sometimes, at night, she would listen to their mournful dirges, and once she crept out in the moonlight to watch them dance on the glittering moon path in the sea.
When she ran to join them, they vanished beneath the waves without a ripple, but she danced anyway and sang a song of sorrow. Peculiar beasts also emerged from the forests or flew down from the sky. Some were huge, bird-like creatures with butterfly wings of many iridescent colours, long necks and beaks. They settled on the sand and scooped it up until their crops were full, then flew away. The land creatures were equally colourful and strange, like no animal she had ever seen before. They splayed upon the ground and spread wings of multi-coloured skin to bask in the sun. They did not appear to eat at all.
Even more bizarre, were the horse-sized beasts with stilt-like legs, which selected a spot and drilled their legs into the ground. They stood for hours, hooting occasionally, before plucking their
thin limbs out and wandering off. They seemed to like the soft soil around the city, and many came to stand there all day. Like the other alien beasts, their skins were patterned with many brilliant colours, making them appear unreal. None would allow Talsy to approach, and she observed them from a distance, marvelling at their weirdness. The horses left them alone, and many quit the area, as if afraid of the peculiar creatures.
Talsy wandered along the beach, humming a tuneless song, when a man walked out of the sea. She froze in disbelief, then gave a glad cry and ran towards him, soon tiring in the soft sand. The creature’s skin gleamed silver and translucent flaps joined his arms and legs like the wings of a ray. He turned to face her, but then marched back into the waves. Talsy shouted and tried to catch up with him, running into the surf. The waves drove her back, and her puny struggles made no headway against the sea's might.
The man dived into the waves with a flash of silver and vanished beneath them. Talsy stumbled back up the beach and sank down on the sand, tears of frustration stinging her eyes. The strange man was clearly an ocean creature, and might be able to find Chanter, if she could only tell him of the Mujar's plight. She sat on the beach until dusk, her heart aching with the loneliness of her vigil and the pain of her loss.
The next day, the silver man reappeared, but this time she just sat and watched him roam the beach. He wandered up and down the beach, foraged in the sand and ate whatever it was he found, but stayed away from her. Two days later, he appeared again, and she observed him with growing despair, the hope that he might come close enough to talk to fading as he stayed out of earshot. The following day he returned, and she approached him again, this time at a sedate pace, so as not to alarm him, but he slipped into the sea before she could get close enough to speak to him.
The next night, as she sat before the cave staring out at the calm, moon-silvered sea, a flash of movement in the water caught her attention. A winged man-shape swam along the shore, making the ocean's sparkling black surface seem magical and inviting. The man always escaped into the wild sea, but now the ocean's tranquillity and his proximity offered a rare opportunity to approach him in his element. Perhaps then he would not be so afraid of her.
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