by Col Buchanan
They did not even know which mountain the legend spoke of. To them, all mountains held evil at their core, and were to be trodden with care. Still, when an earthquake shook long and hard enough for a certain peak to collapse in its entirety, save for one free-standing column rooted in a colossal mound of rubble, like a marker for a grave… and when out of the east came a man with gold skin leading a train of disciples celebrating his divinity… the peoples of Masheen knelt at his feet and offered him all.
This Sun King reigned from a sprawling palace perched on the highest shoulder of a mountain overlooking the port city of Masheen. The Cloud City, they called it. The Sun King was old and in his decline by then, from what Baracha had been able to discern during his first week within the port city. It seemed this new age of enlightenment had changed little for the people, save for imposing an even higher burden of taxation. Some had inevitably become cynical about this deity of theirs, who squatted high over their labours and demanded tributes equal to any tyrant. The Sun King now lived as a recluse, seeing only those few he trusted most completely. Once a year he would release a pronouncement of his Most Glorious Wisdom, offered to the population in the form of thousands of parchments each lovingly transcribed by hand. Always, they tended merely to rant, to threaten.
Within the Cloud City, it was said not a week went by without some official or priest being put to death by scalding alive for reasons of treachery. The Sun King had banned all weaponry within the walls of his palace complex, save for those in the hands of his hitees, the Glorious Virgins – female bodyguards chosen young from among his harem for their love of him. In his paranoia he had outlawed the wearing of hats, and even garments with sleeves. At nights, from the depths of his inner sanctum, his howls could be heard on the far reaches of the Miders sea, so mad was he become, they said.
Baracha was caught just as he breached the inner sanctuary itself, which was a palace within a palace, secluded from the rest of the Cloud City on its own promontory of rock, and known as the Forbidden Sanctuary. It seemed he had underestimated the vigilance of the hitees. Even so, he was armed substantially, and they lost no small percentage of their sisterhood before Baracha was overwhelmed by sheer numbers and beaten to the floor unconscious.
He was thrown into a stone cell in the bowels of the Forbidden Sanctum, where for some days they tortured him without the least degree of mercy. They wanted to know who he was, where he came from – and, of course, why he had come to slay their god.
By his own account, Baracha gave them nothing. It was evident that they were unaware of their Sun King's guilty secret – that this so-called god had recently murdered his own twelve-year-old son – a seal-wearer whose life was wrenched from him in a fit of delusion. The Sun King had since passed it off as a mysterious accident, though the Rshun knew otherwise.
On the fifth day of his captivity, they dragged him to a wood-panelled room with a lace-work screen at its far end, and secured him by the hands and throat with leather bindings to one of the wooden columns, before tearing the remaining tatters of cloth from his body. They then hauled in one of the wild mountain dogs of the region, stinking from its own filth, and crazed with hunger, its claws scraping reluctantly across the polished floor. They left him alone with it. The dog eyed him warily from across the room. Then dipped its head and growled.
He knew what animals in the wild went for first, the soft genitalia of their prey. All of a sudden, Baracha became acutely conscious of his own exposed nakedness.
The animal padded towards him, swinging its head low across the floor, sniffing. It came close enough that he could see the muck caked in its fur, hardening it into tufts, the white lice crawling through them. The hound paused a few feet away and growled with bared teeth.
Baracha growled back at it.
When the beast started forward, already snapping for his groin, he found himself, without transition, rolling on the floor with the animal, his thumbs crushing its throat while its feet scrabbled at him for purchase. He did not let go despite the savage wounds it was causing him. It took long grim moments before the dog died in his grasp.
As its reflexes stilled, and his own vision cleared, he saw the broken twines about his wrists and the torn skin underneath them, realizing that he had somehow broken free of them in his moment of greatest terror. Though he did not call it that, instead he called it his moment of distress.
A strange whimper sounded from behind the lace screen. Baracha knew then that the Sun King was observing him – and that the man was fearful of the Rshun.
Bloody and staggering, Baracha was surrounded once more by the hitees, who hurried him away from the scene, down steps and ladders until he was thrown once again into the hole in the rock that had been his cell. They told him they would have another dog for him tomorrow; that they would ensure his bonds were stronger next time.
By then, the monastery of Sato had become alerted to Baracha's plight. The Seer had had a vision in his sleep: Baracha was in torment prolonged and unspeakable. They informed Ash – who happened to be on the island of Lagos at the time – via a carrier bird sent to their agent there. He made haste to the mainland, to Masheen, and from there to the Cloud City, disguising himself as one of the many devotees who travelled to the palace to give praise to their god. His plan was hatched only after several days of reconnoitre.
A feast was to be held in the Forbidden Sanctuary to celebrate the birthday of the deity's favoured mistress. Only the most trusted of his disciples would be allowed access to this event. On the night of the feast, these privileged guests dined on only the most exotic of fare: baked firemoths and honeyed sandshrimps, rare flightless birds still with their feathers, poached muala eggs, grotesque specimens of fish so large they could not be cooked in the kitchens of the Forbidden Sanctuary, but were instead prepared elsewhere within the palace complex, and borne under guard to the banquet hall. Central to this experience of culinary discovery was a murmur worm. The creature was carried inside by forty palace attendants, and stretched along the full length of a sixteen-foot table. It was as wide as a barrel and as white as a maggot, having never been exposed to daylight in its long life amid the crevasses and caverns of the deep earth. The guests had not yet sampled this delicacy when the Sun King himself entered the room, flanked by his ever-watchful hitees. Silence descended as all threw themselves prostrate to the floor.
They did not notice at first the thing emerging from the flank of the great worm.
It appeared from one of the great incisions made in the creature's flesh for the cooks to fill its innards with delicate stuffings. But then someone cried out – the Sun King's feted mistress no less – and a rustle of heads turned in time to see an arm pushing its way out into the air. It was followed by a head, then another arm, and finally the entire body of a man, who flopped to the floor gasping. He climbed to his feet without hindrance, his clothes sodden from the worm's internal juices.
On the far side of the hall shone the Sun King, his naked form coated in glittering gold, even his hair and his eyelashes. The intruding stranger, on the other hand, was unadorned, his hands empty.
As he strode towards the Sun King the disciples cleared a path before him, many gasping in shock as at the sight of his coal-black skin. It was as though the World Serpent had come back in the form of a man.
So stunned were they by this apparition of darkness – even the hitee guards staring wild-eyed at the approaching figure – that all froze to the spot as the stranger stepped upon to the dais where the Sun King stood, and bent forwards as though to offer him a kiss.
It was the knife that broke the spell at last, emerging as though from nowhere, to be pressed against the throat of the golden-skinned god.
'Back!' Ash hollered, stopping them even as they began to rush to their master's aid. It seemed they did not did consider their Sun King to be invincible, after all.
They watched the blade at his throat; watched the face of the stranger, his dazzling white eyes and white teeth.
>
Ash ordered that his comrade be freed and brought before him. When no one moved he repeated his words – this time addressing the Sun King himself. 'Do it', he urged, 'and I will not kill you.'
Whether he believed him or not, Sun King responded with a trembling gesture to his followers.
They remained long moments standing there waiting for Baracha to be brought up from his hole. Eventually enough time passed for the disciples to begin shifting uneasily and to whisper amongst themselves. A stink of fear-sweat rose from the skin of the Sun King. The situation might have become farcical, if not for the hitees getting restless as their patience diminished. Ash was fully aware that, despite the risk to their god, one of them might break rank at any moment and try to rush him.
Finally the doors clattered open, and Ash barely recognised Baracha as they dragged him into the hall. When the prisoner looked up through his one sound eye to see the old farlander standing there in their midst, he reasoned that Ash must have come to finish vendetta and then die by his side. There would be no way out for them once the Sun King was slain. 'Now tell me,' Ash instructed the god. 'Tell me who you really are.'
The Sun King looked close to breaking, the sweat running off him in sheets. An actual puddle of it had formed around the soles of his bare feet.
At the first bubble of blood from the prick of the knife, the false deity began to babble in terror.
He told them all who he really was: how he had been born into a clan of travelling hedge-rogues, who made their living from one petty deception after another. He rambled on about how they had heard of the fallen mountain, about the ancient prophecy and how the idea had struck him fully-formed of masquerading himself as a god, with his family of chancers acting as his first disciples. Hushing to barely a whisper, he confessed to their murders and betrayals committed over the following years – no longer trusting them once his pre-eminence was established, removing them in one way or the other until only he himself remained.
By now the looks of alarm around Ash and the Sun King had turned to uncertainty and then anger.
'Please,' he pleaded. 'Surely a god's hand did indeed truly guide me here. Who could have done so without a spark of divine aid, I ask you? If I am not a god, then know at least that I am a god's chosen intermediary.'
'Then go to your god,' said Ash, and finally stepped away from him.
The assembled crowd did not try to stop the old Rshun from leaving. Instead they turned to the naked, golden man quivering before them… and fell on him as wild animals fall on their prey.
*
'And so you know all this from Baracha and Ash, that talkative pair?' inquired Nico, squinting in the sunlight of the stable.
'Well, I may have embellished the gaps a little, I confess. And I've heard other variations of the story told. But what counts is that my master was hardly grateful for Ash's intervention. No, he actually felt slighted by it, and from then onwards has never missed an opportunity to match himself against his rescuer, or to pass derogatory comments within the earshot of others. He most of all wishes for a reckoning between them both, to prove he is not second best after all.'
'But you think Ash would win such a contest?'
'Of course he would win. Haven't you been listening?'
Aleas had been digging around inside his robe as they spoke. He produced two dried preens, and tossed one to Nico.
'I'll tell you this much,' he continued. 'Consider a hundred vendettas conducted by this order – ninety-nine of those will involve the killing of greedy merchants or jealous lovers. Not for Ash, though: the Rshun have a name for him here. They call him inshasha, which means killer of kings.'
Nico bit into the dried fruit, relishing its smoky sharpness on his tongue. He swallowed some, considering all he had heard.
'And what is it they call Baracha?' he asked.
Before Aleas could reply a shadow fell across their laps. Olson stood in the doorway, hands planted on hips.
'What's this idling?' he sneered, taking in the two apprentices lazing on the stable floor. He squinted at Aleas's bloody lip. 'And you've been fighting, too!' He bustled towards them in his loose robes, grabbing each by the ear and pulling hard.
'Up! Up!' he commanded, yanking them simultaneously to their feet.
The sudden pain was sharp enough to blur Nico's vision. 'What do they call Baracha?' he nevertheless hissed, half bent-over in the grip of Olson's fingers.
Choking on a mixture of laughter and pain, Aleas managed to reply, 'Alhazii.'
*
'What's going on here?' bellowed a voice from across the courtyard as Olson hauled them, stumbling, from the stable. It belonged to Baracha, breaking off from his practice session with a great broadsword.
Both young men straightened up instantly, as Olson released them. 'I caught them lounging about, eating stolen food. They've clearly been fighting too.'
'Is that true, Aleas?' the Alhazii demanded of his apprentice. 'You squabble now in the dirt like a child?'
'Not at all,' Aleas replied as he wiped the remaining blood from his chin. 'We were merely practising our short-staff skills. I fear I was a little slow in defending myself.'
'Just practising?' The big man took Aleas by the chin, inspecting his wound. Displeased at the sight, he released it. 'I told you to stay away from this one, and now you see why. Remember, you are training to be Rshun. We do not settle our differences like dogs fighting in the street. If you have a problem with each other, then we must settle it in the proper way.'
Aleas and Nico exchanged apprehensive looks.
'But we have no problem between us,' Aleas said with care.
'What? You have been bled, boy.
'Yes – and it was but an accident.'
'It is still an insult!'
'Master,' said Aleas, 'I have hardly been insulted. It was merely sport.'
'Be quiet, Aleas.'
His apprentice looked to the ground glumly.
'We must settle this properly,' repeated Baracha, exchanging a knowing glance with Olson. 'And we will do it in the old way – you understand, the pair of you?'
Oh no, thought Nico, not liking the sound of that.
'A fine idea,' said Olson with a renewed sparkle in his eyes. 'I will fetch what they need.' And he hurried off towards the north wing.
'What we need?' echoed Nico, asking of no one in particular.
'We are going fishing,' said Aleas with a sigh, his gaze still fixed firmly on the ground.
Fishing? marvelled Nico, but he knew better than to open his mouth again. Instead he wondered, with a rising panic, what terrible ordeal could lurk behind such an innocent phrase.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fishing 'You keep your distance from him, I see,' Kosh remarked in their native Honshu.
'I keep my distance from everyone,' replied Ash, passing his old friend the gourd of Cheem Fire.
Kosh took a drink and returned it. 'Aye. But particularly from the boy, is what I mean.'
'It's best for him that way.'
'Really? Best for him, or best for you?'
Ash leaned his back against the tree they sat beneath at the edge of the mali forest. He took another mouthful and felt the liquid searing down his throat and into the depths of his stomach. It was an unusually hot day for the mountains of Cheem, so the shade here beneath the leaves of this mali tree was a pleasant relief to the two farlanders. The everyday sounds of the nearby monastery fell into the silence of the valley floor extending before them. The valley itself was reduced to something small and precious by the stark mountains rising all around it: high snow-caps soaring in the distance, the lower slopes closer by speckled with wild goats, and above them the intense blue of the sky, the clouds sailing across it looking flimsier than paper.
Kosh belched. 'I sent off a letter to his mother, you know,' he said tightly.
'Did you read it first?'
A shake of the head. 'That boy seems a sensitive soul. I hear he keeps himself to himself most of the ti
me.'
'Perhaps he prefers it that way.'
'Aye, like his master. I wonder, though. I wonder if he is ready for all of this.'
Ash snorted. 'Who is ever ready for this?'
'We were,' said Kosh.
'We were soldiers. We had butchered already.'
'Soldiers or not, we were both cast for this life. When I look at your boy, though, I do not see it in his eyes. He could be a fighter, yes… but a hunter, a slayer?'
'You speak nonsense, Kosh, as you have always spoken nonsense. There is only one thing that counts in this work, in this world even. And it's that which he has most of all.'
'A handsome mother in need of stiff action?'
Ash raised his chin. 'He has heart,' he replied.
For a time they sat and gazed out over the bright valley, without speaking. The sunlight was catching itself in the ripples of the river, producing a long, twisting ribbon of silver with reflections of gold. Kosh still had questions on his mind, Ash could tell. The man had been holding them back ever since Ash had first returned to the monastery of Sato with an apprentice in tow.
'I'm just surprised, that's all,' said Kosh at last. 'I didn't think to see you with an apprentice after all this time. And they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks.' His tone changed, became softer. 'Has time healed, at last?'
Ash looked sidelong at him, the answer in his eyes.
Kosh nodded. His own eyes turned away and squinted into the distance – perhaps seeing his own memories of that day neither of them wished to speak of.
Long ago, Ash had found that he could not bring to mind his son's face unless he recalled it in those last moments of the boy's life. It was the irony of memory, he thought: to see clearly only those moments most painful of all.
He could see his son's features now, more like his mother's than his own. His son, his battle-squire in training, just fourteen years old, and awkward in his heavy leather half-armour, carrying the spare spears and with the water bags hanging from him. The boy struggling towards him over the dying men and corpses scattered on their position, on a small hill to the far left of the main battle line, tripping in blind fear. Ash's words were lost in the deafening tumult of the fighting that raged around them. His son's young face suddenly gone white as he turned back towards the steaming cavalry thundering into the rear of their tattered ranks without warning. Men of General Tu's, their own men of the People's Army, gone over to the side of the overlords in exchange for a fortune in gold.