by Russ Linton
When they were done, Sidge knelt next to the grave and furrowed his mandibles into the earth. He uttered several mantras which he thought appropriate. Gambora's Sacrifice. The Rite of the Eternal Storm. Finally, the Four Corners, the verses which had begun their pilgrimage.
Next to him, Izhar moaned. Sidge turned his mandibles to face the battered Cloud Born.
"We should leave him as well," said Chuman, once more cold and lifeless.
"Excuse me?"
Sidge clacked his mandibles but found his earlier anger, detached, like a skin beginning to shed. No emotion showed on Chuman's face this time. Whatever he was, despite the earlier hint of compassion, this must be his true nature.
He turned his attention back to Izhar.
"He needs rest, that is all. Channeling Vasheru's Fire with such power…I have no idea how much strength is required."
"Yes, you cannot call on Vasheru." said Chuman.
"I call," whispered Sidge. "He doesn't listen."
Silence filled with the almost imperceptible whir of Chuman's insides and the distant song. "You hear the call. To listen is your task, not his."
"I wish I didn't hear it. I'd rather channel, feel Vasheru's praise and make my brother proud."
"I am broken too," said Chuman, a phrase he'd spoken before but this time it came as though revelation had struck him, a hammer on wrought iron. Frustration creased his flat brow as he wrestled with the words. "We are broken."
Sidge nodded.
Chuman wandered toward the bank and dropped into the mud, his back against a waist-high root. Methodically, he began to scan the marsh.
Sidge waited beside Izhar, being sure to keep Chuman in his sight. Mantras or even Izhar's teachings did not mention such a man—undying, metal, one who feeds on the very power meant to vanquish the Attarah's foes.
If the giant were a monster—a monster like him—at least he had Vasheru's favor.
"You have yet to explain exactly what you are."
Chuman stopped scanning to stare at the scraps of robe clinging to his body. "I am an acolyte."
The response took Sidge by surprise. "No, what were you before?"
"Nothing."
"You mean you don't know?"
"I was nothing before. Then I was given these robes. An acolyte is all I wish to be, but the song calls."
The words almost made sense to him. Sidge felt the same way.
"Why would Gohala, of all the Cloud Born, even bother with you?"
"Master Gohala, yes. He also asked what I was, but he asked differently."
"How?"
"He asked who made me."
As much as he'd once loathed Gohala, the man had been on to something. Izhar had revealed the unyielding purist had once sought knowledge in the places least expected of him. "What did you say to him?"
"The Jadugar. They made me."
"They?" Sidge's antennae crept toward the sky, and his mandibles hinged open. "Tell me what you know of them."
"I know they forged my bones. Poured life into my mouth. Spoke words of making into my ear."
Despite himself, Sidge let Izhar slip completely from view as he leaned toward Chuman. "Why?"
Chuman stared, unblinking. "I do not know, but we are no longer theirs. We serve many masters and seek the pillars, called onward by the song."
Onward. Mute observers. Sidge listened to the thrum of the insects and wished he could succumb to their mindless droning. The mystical song remained, though, and the tainted atmosphere of the marsh again began to seep between the joints of his chitin. He quietly recited mantras, it didn't matter which, anything to gather the frayed edges of what he once thought himself to be.
CHAPTER XI
They passed the night tucked between the network of roots, shielded by the low canopy of feathery leaves.
Too many forces pulled at Sidge inside and out. Every sight a horror, every breeze a sickness-inducing wave. He couldn't forget and desperately wanted to. All night, he clung tight to his lessons. Meditation had never been his gift though he sought it to bring at least an illusion of focus to his tumultuous mind.
The giant had little trouble. Chuman continued to sweep the horizon throughout the night, making precise twists in each direction.
As the sun rose, damp air clung to the outside of Sidge's shell. He'd done his best to adjust Izhar's robe so it covered any exposed skin. In part, this was to spare his helpless mentor the feasting of the lesser insects. Mostly he was sparing himself the spectacle of the tiny bugs gorging themselves with blood.
Face covered, Izhar woke with a start and nearly cracked his skull on an overhanging branch. Sidge placed his hand on the old Master's bald scalp and scooted toward him.
"Be careful."
Izhar swatted his hood from his face and eyes, clouded with sleep, found Sidge. A glimpse of terror so like Farsal's flashed across his features. Izhar held his breath for a moment before asking, "Sidge?"
Sidge scuttled backward on his feet and middle hands. "It's me."
"Your…your robes. What happened to your robes?"
"Farsal." He couldn't say more.
Izhar's gaze stopped on the freshly turned earth of Farsal's grave.
Sidge's lenses took in the spot where Farsal was buried, examined his own dirt-stained hands, and kept their vigil on Chuman all at once. The giant's tattered robes were more immodest in the gray light of dawn. Shoulders and hood were stained with deep black ichor and the earthy reds of dried blood. The lower half hung in muddy strands. His wounds had healed to hide the mysteries underneath.
"Oh Sidge, I'm so sorry." Sidge stayed still, not wanting to let himself begin to fray again. When the silence went on, Izhar asked, "Where are we?"
"Deep in the marsh."
His mentor's shoulders dropped, exasperation filling his voice, "We need to get you out of here."
"Me? Get me out of here?" Sidge rose and crossed his four arms. His night spent fighting the crush of emotion began to unravel. "You're the one lost, surrounded by monsters. Or do you fear for my safety because I cannot defend myself with Vasheru's holy fire?"
Izhar, who'd started to crawl out from the nest of roots, froze. A deep sigh shook his belly. He creaked to his feet and walked toward Farsal's resting place, where he bowed his head.
Sidge followed, unable to abide his mentor's silence even in such a solemn moment. "How long have you known?"
"I never wanted to discourage you." He looked into the sky with watery eyes. "I've recently begun to suspect that while Vasheru speaks to you, his power will never be yours to command."
Then he wasn't a Cloud Born nor an acolyte. One thing left for him to be.
Before Sidge could stop himself, he grabbed Izhar's arm. "How long? Did you know this before the festival?"
"Since before we departed on the pilgrimage." Izhar's brow furrowed and he placed a hand on Sidge's. "You've been an excellent pupil. Your recall of the mantras is extraordinary. Your desire, your attention to detail…" His shoulders sagged, and he faced the grave again. "Yet it was never enough. So I made sure your display was a success. Or really, our new raksha did."
Their raksha. Sidge ground his mandibles.
He recalled the acrid smell in the air when he channeled. The lack of Vasheru's Kiss. So it hadn't been different simply because he was an Ek'kiru. Something had been wrong. His grip on Izhar's arm slackened and fell away.
Chuman's movements slowed. He appeared to stare off to the east, where the fog rose from the marsh into an orange haze.
"Mysteries of the Jadugar," spat Sidge. "An illusion."
Finally, the truth. He let the pulsing life and the forlorn song trickle down his antennae, deep into the roots. They'd all been right about him. A bugman could never hope to be anything more than a beast.
Sidge forced out a hoarse, gravelly whisper, the volume rising with each word. "Then why did you go to so much trouble to teach me? To practice with me? To insist days ago I could become the Stormblade!?"
"B
ut you can," pleaded Izhar. "Before we left, Lord Chakor and I had a plan…"
Just the mention of the name set Sidge's wings buzzing. What had Kaaliya said? Don't thank her yet? That Izhar and Chakor were a new definition of trouble? Their blessing of finding a sponsor had indeed been a curse. This raksha had poisoned his master and stolen her.
"I asked you not to mention his name…"
"Don't you see, Sidge? With his support, you can be the Stormblade. His word carries weight, and his coffers are vast. Once there, you can make the temple whatever you wish."
Sidge moved closer to Izhar, one foot pressing into the loose earth. "Chakor and his boons are not here! They were claimed by this accursed marsh, a hell I ordered us to enter because I swore to no longer disregard your teachings. Even Gohala had begun to believe! Yet one conversation with Chakor and you deny your own work?" He leveled a finger at Chuman. "You cannot so easily dismiss him as an illusion."
Chuman swiveled his head toward them.
"We need to leave here," Izhar said through tight lips.
"You would run away. Have Farsal die for nothing?"
"I would have you live!" shouted Izhar. "I don't give a damn about the Temple!"
Neither of them spoke. For the first time since his games with Kaaliya and her ability to see into him, to know where his true focus lay among the thousands of tiny lenses, Sidge was keenly aware he stared at the portly man in front of him and wasn't sure who looked back.
"How can you say such a thing?"
Izhar swiveled on his heel and peered into the mists of the distant bank, an unending phalanx of reeds.
"I lost my faith long ago."
A strange wave washed through him, and Sidge found himself in a numbing trough. "But…the Stormblade. You spoke of your own desires to be his replacement. Something you wanted before all this madness."
"I found myself unworthy. The incident with Gohala. My desperate attempts to call the Wisdom. I'm lost, Sidge. Unsure what the temple means."
"Your teachings have helped us to find more truth than you realize. Yes, things are confusing at this moment…Vasheru's breath are they confusing, but we can find answers."
"I've long searched for those answers only to be presented with more questions." Izhar faced him again and flexed his jaw, preparing to speak. Whatever weight his troubled mentor carried was about to be unburdened. "When you first came to us, there was great dissent. Many believed we would anger Vasheru."
Growing up, Sidge realized he hadn't been completely ignorant of the controversy. By the time he'd reached the age to really understand, it had seemed the other acolytes, and most of the Cloud Born had grown used to his presence. Or, rather, he'd grown used to making excuses for them.
"Don't say it." Sidge didn't want to hear more, his numbness coming to an end, but he knew the momentum behind Izhar's confession could not be stopped.
"Some felt we had brought slavery into the Temple, the very thing it was founded to guard against."
"I am not a slave." The words caught in Sidge's throat. Another wave loomed over him.
The day Izhar had given up the corestone, he'd spoken of his own father, the carpenter, and the Ek'kiru laborers they used to work alongside repairing Stronghold, an arrangement older than time itself. Yet within the timeless past captured upon the city's murals and frescoes, none showed a single Ek'kiru. They were banished to the stables. They bore litters or hauled wagons while wrapped in ceremonial caparisons reserved for horses and other beasts. They drew the wrath of the palace guard.
He recalled sitting beside the innkeeper's wife occupied with the menial task of folding moonstriders. Small eyes which had viewed him with suspicion became blind.
"No, you aren't a slave." The conviction with which Izhar said this brought little comfort. "Still, many couldn't accept you as an acolyte."
"Ek'kiru aren't slaves either. Like Yurva and Corva, they come and go as they please." The building pressure inside told him he needed to abandon the argument and rein in his feelings. Even as he tried, it began to feel more and more like the day he'd tried to guide the vardo down the steep embankment near Stronghold. He had little choice.
"True, but neither are the Ek'kiru part of the Attarah's people or given status in the Forge. They have no caste, commoner or noble, and that's enough to see them worked as much like slaves as you damn well can without using the title. For all I can tell, it has been such since the city was founded."
"All this time nobody spoke of this," hissed Sidge. "We are a brotherhood! Even things never meant for the Masters' ears, the acolytes would tell each other." Sidge sliced his mandibles toward Farsal's grave. "Why did he say nothing?"
Izhar warded away Sidge's words with an open hand. "You were Farsal's friend and brother. He didn't wish to hurt you. As for the others, how often did they rely on your restless ways to save their hides from a beating when they neglected their chores?" Izhar picked a clump of mud from his robes and hurled it into the still waters. "And those who had already experienced Stronghold, would they admit to the hypocrisy if they saw it? They'd be banished. Forgotten." Izhar gave a mirthless grin. "Or end up an abandoned old heretic with no raksha."
"You never told me either." The descent had begun, the wheel chains loosened.
"I wanted to protect you more than any of them," pleaded Izhar.
The final barrier had been shattered to reveal an unbridgeable chasm. On the other side stood the people he once called family. They were family in name alone. More unspoken truths swirled in Sidge's mind.
"Tell me about my parents."
"I…I didn't know them."
Sidge canted his head sideways at an impossible angle. "Why?"
Izhar faced the marsh again and sighed, deep and resigned. "The men who brought you were traders. They were giving us tallow in exchange for earth from the Sheath. They'd lost a portion of their shipment on the way. Bears, wolves, something got into it during the night. They didn't have enough for the trade but wanted to fill their cart." Izhar shrugged "You know the soil is precious—precious to the farmers who use it and who are too scared to venture out and gather it themselves."
"How does this involve me?"
"They offered an egg to make up the balance."
"A…a trade?" Sidge stuttered. He lashed out, filling his fists with Izhar's robe and forcing him to look him in the eyes.
"It was a callous act," Izhar's words spilled out. "Barter with a life? I couldn't leave you with them. I accepted without consulting my own Master or the Stormblade."
"You bought me? Traded me for dirt?" Sidge yanked at Izhar's collar and man's eyes widened. "My parents traded me?"
"Men, not Ek'kiru. They said they'd found you." Izhar's face reddened, his eyes bulged as he fought to keep his balance.
"Found? Where?" Sidge's lenses began to drift, one at a time, the world buzzing like the cloud of voracious insects.
"Near here," Izhar strained. "Near Sli'mir's realm."
A strange sensation shivered its way down his antennae and into his wings. They buzzed of their own volition, and the noise triggered an onslaught of memory. He tasted the marsh where the recent massacre had taken place, fecund dirt and the tang of blood and rotten flesh. Yes, his true home. It had always been present, a film on his chitin, an appetite for flesh swollen and softened in the jars. He could taste both of them…
"You aren't one of them," begged Izhar. "By Vasheru, I never wanted this–"
"NO!"
Sidge no longer saw Izhar. His mentor's face became a reflection of Farsal's tortured grimace. Small eyes, as wide as they could be yet unnervingly tiny in those blood-filled cheeks.
Mandibles ground. Wings rattled.
He tried to think of Kaaliya whose beauty was a salve for all his troubles. The serenity was replaced by visions of the man and woman carved into the noble's house in Stronghold, staring blissfully into each other's beady eyes, their lips soft, even having been captured in stone, their embrace eternal and taunting. He wa
nted nothing more than to snap off the ugly man's head and watch it tumble to the street far below so he could take his place beside her.
Soft pink flesh stretched between the collar and beard.
He lunged.
Enraged, Sidge chewed ravenously. Warm liquid dribbled down his chin and trickled into his mouth, a tasteless slippery concoction. A great force pressed against his face and pulled his head back. He roared in anger as he was dragged away from the tiny-eyed man. His cries broke the living call of the marsh.
He was aware of Chuman, pinning him in the mud with one hand. The flesh of the giant's forearm was peeled away, and blood ran down silver bones in steady rivers. If the Jadugar-forged man knew pain, the wooden face did not register it. Instead, tears welled in the giant's sallow eyes as he stared at the gray mass lying nearby.
Izhar. Covered in blood.
CHAPTER XII
Kaaliya swung her legs out of the well, dripping water as they crested the rim. The skirt of her sari was damp, though she would have thought it to be soaked. She swiveled and planted her feet on the path of colored stones. As she did, she noticed something she'd not seen before. Through the crystal water, she could see a band around the inside of the well carved with the same strange runes she'd seen on the emberseeds.
Reaching out to touch them, she jerked away as Hedgedweller's voice drifted out of the ferns behind her, blending with the rattle of stiff leaves.
"What does he say to you, cave daughter?"
Riddles and questions without answers, these were the trolls' specialty. Most people found them infuriating, and many feared their eccentric ways and alien appearance. After that day so long ago at the Pit, Kaaliya couldn't fear them. Even if they hadn't helped her, she didn't think she'd ever have feared them. Her one desire after escaping the Pit had been to see everything. The trolls and their bizarre appearance and customs were part of this. A deeper part than anyone, even she, really understood.