The Legend of El Shashi

by Marc Secchia

  The marketplace was heaving. Jammed against the three-man-tall sandstone defensive ramparts at the southern end of town, it perfectly captured the suns’ reflected heat. Bloodlike runnels of russet clay dust, scuffed up by a thousand boots, streaked my forehead and neck as though I had been daubed with costly Lanthrian dye. Jatha lowed, swine squealed, and caged lyoms screeched their fear. The stench of dung and faeces overpowered all else. Three days running, I paid a waterboy to fetch sustenance rather than leave my stall. Because another border spat with the Lymarians to the north had flared up, Janos’ swords fetched nearly half again what I had expected. My cart emptied rapidly and my purse knocked weightily upon my thigh. I envisaged a return days earlier than usual.

  Perhaps, I mused, I should sample the city’s entertainments before I left? There were no such diversions beneath Janos’ watchful eye. Indeed not.

  Although I stank like those swine!

  Nothing a makh or two in the pumphouse would not remedy, and then … ay. As the shadows lengthened that day, I was in an expansive mood, haggling more out of habit than need. My eyes touched the Songstrel spire that was Elaki Fountain’s signature feature, a delicate finger of rosy palisk-quartz from which the dioni and daimi orisons were daily and seasonally sung to the Gods, calculating that sunset was less than a makh distant. In my hands I held the last and finest Lykki short sword.

  “Hold, trader!” A bear’s-paw of a hand stopped the blood in my wrist. “Let me see that blade.”

  This man towered head and shoulders above me, and I am no stripling. His visage was a battlefield of scars.

  “But I’ve a customer already.”

  I stared up at the man’s lips, parted in a salikweed-stained snarl. Use of the weed, which is said to be addictive and grants a man berserker strength in combat, stains the lips, teeth, and gums a bluish-purple. It also kills. This man would not live beyond his thirtieth anna. “Your customer,” growled the lips, “is no longer interested in this weapon.”

  The other man said, “But I–”

  The giant’s grip tightened until I yelped in pain. “He isn’t interested.”

  My bones ground together like a poorly greased cart wheel. From the corner of my eye, I saw my erstwhile customer bolt. No fool he. But that left me with the big ape. Should I yell …? No. Instead, I tried a nervous bluster, “I’ll summon the guard if you don’t back off–”

  “There’s no need for nastiness. Release him, Tortha.”

  Her voice was honey to my ears, and the stillness of a forest pool enshrouded by dappling willows. There was no need to see her face to know she was beautiful. The man called Tortha stepped back; relinquishing his hold as a wardog leaves a corpse–reluctantly, baring its teeth in a blood-dipped snarl. From behind him stepped a slight figure, robed in dove grey from head to foot, neither short nor tall but comfortably in between. My eyes could not penetrate the shadows beneath her hood. But she was rich, and cultured, and despite her disguise, completely out of place in Elaki Fountain’s steamy marketplace.

  There is a trader’s instinctive skill of sizing up one’s clients. Few make good profits without this grephe-talent. Often the body or hands grant clues no speech can convey, and so it was with this woman. An image flashed to mind: me as a torfly entangled in her spun-silk web, a delectable but deadly entanglement. My fingers curled around the sheathed Lykki sword. A snake coiled in my gut.

  The better to disguise my unease, I lowered my gaze. Proper deference to one of high station. “How may I assist you, Honoria …?”

  “The sword. Name your price.”

  Not for her the nuanced approach. “This is not just any sword,” I began, glancing from the woman to the brute. “This is the finest example of its craft in all Roymere–” Tortha’s deepening scowl reminded me of my mortality. I hurriedly adjusted my sales pitch, “–but for you, I can offer the excellent price of two … of one hundred Lortiti Reals.”

  Tortha was grinning, I noticed sourly, no doubt enjoying my discomfort. The woman did not hesitate. “Done and well bargained for,” she purred. “Give the trader his due, Tortha.”

  My hands quivered as I accepted the heavy pouch from his paw. One hundred was a fair price for a blade of superior quality, but it was still a substantial sum, the province of the truly wealthy. Janos would be delighted.

  “Aren’t you going to check it?”

  “Check it? Why, Honoria, I would not be so presumptuous–”

  “It could be ormetal.”

  I balanced the pouch in my palm, hearing a reassuring clink, conscious of the heft and texture of the thick coins beneath the pliant leather. “I’m certain that all is in order.”

  “Check the bag!”

  Her command made me jump like a startled bullfrog. I fell to loosening the buckles as frenziedly as Yuthe’s nectar lay within and immortality itself were in my grasp, all the time thinking: Why was this so important to them? Why a sword? What were they truly buying?

  But oh! The sight of one hundred Lortiti Reals softly glimmering, the thick pure gold of the highest quality, the hallmark of the golden marmoset graven upon each side … I must confess, a fool’s grin lay plastered across my face as I peered within the pouch.

  In that instant, a pale, slim hand reached up to the brocade collar of my jerkin and the woman remarked, “What a very fine garment you’re wearing, trader–a garment worthy of a Hassutl! Where did you get it?”

  “It was a gift.”

  “Oh?”

  “From the same man in Yarabi Vale who made the sword, actually, a craftsman of great skill and repute–Janos the Armourer.”

  “And how excellently it fits your broad shoulders!” she exclaimed, stepping closer to examine the beadwork.

  Myrrh? I wondered at her perfume. Myrrh for embalming, and what else? Cinnamon? Cloves? Most unusual … and cloying. I felt odd. Was it the heat? What had I just said to her? My memory of our conversation was as dust sliding between my fingers.

  She said, “I am called Jyla, and I have an eye for quality work. That is why I picked out your Lykki short sword. I’m always in the market for a good sword.”

  I coughed. Such a remark I might have attracted in an alehouse, or even a brothel, but never in my experience from a lady of her undoubted station. Innuendo, yes, but as subtle as a charging pachyderm. This was beyond flattery. Suddenly, I could not quickly enough see the backs of this strange pair.

  I snapped the pouch shut. “Thank you exceedingly for your custom, Honoria Jyla. You are as gracious as you are radiant. I shall convey your compliments to Janos when next I see him.”

  “Does this Janos not trade his own wares?”

  “He does not travel much,” I replied quickly. “I act as his agent … ah, in this region. For a small commission, you understand. Business is business.”

  “Of course,” Jyla agreed, adjusting her hood to allow me a glimpse of her eyes. “Business is business, trader. A good eventide to you.”

  “Likewise be yours.”

  My reply was automatic; my fingers, clasping the pouch against my thigh, were as cramped and immobile as the branches of a petrified tree. A shadow had crossed my quoph just then, a chill deeper than mere bone or flesh could endure–for I was certain of what I had seen.

  Her eyes were black. Sclera, iris and pupil alike were as black as onyx, holes of nothingness bored into a statue’s perfect face; twin voids out of which no good thing could conceivably emerge.

  I could not suppress a shudder.

  I own, I tried to forget all about the Honoria Jyla. But, just a few makh after I departed Elaki Fountain, I had the double misfortune to encounter another Honoria. As my fingers deftly stitched a red-crested parakeet’s broken wing, I was leagues away in ruminations worthy of any cud-chewing jatha, thinking:

  I have always loved animals. Janos labelled my way with animals ‘magic’. This, mark my words, from an otherwise rational man … utter hogs-breath! Granted, I can calm a wild black bear enough to treat its injured paw, and
even the most ferocious storm kestrel will bend its wing to my touch. My greatest boast is this: I have touched a blue condor. Truly told, I have touched that rarest of birds, which is said to signify Mata’s favour and is indeed, the embodiment of Her presence in the world. Let the credulous attend! The condor brought me no good fortune. That selfsame makh, I learned of my parents’ murder.

  Magic? I expect it requires respect. Animals mistrust fear, but warm to respect. Janos insists it is more to do with heart. He once said that I could not knowingly abide the suffering of any of Mata’s creatures, nor allow them harm. Ay. When I see a jatha limping, or a hedgehog torn by the spotted salcat’s cunning claw, something inexplicable happens within my quoph. It is a desire to help, but at once more fundamental and more compelling. When as a child I used to hold my breath, my father would smile and say, ‘You’ll need to breathe sooner or later, Arlak.’ This desire was akin to spring water welling up; an endless upward and outward pressure. It must spill over. A powerful river, it could not but flow.

  In those unbearable seasons after the Faloxx slew my childhood, I tried desperately to fill the ache hollowing out my breast from the inside. But it was Mata’s creatures that saved my sanity. I began to bring animals home, great and small, furred and feathered. Janos said that caring for them taught me to care for myself.

  So that is what I was doing with the little girl’s pet parakeet when the Honoria Telmak happened by in her violet-liveried takibuge.

  “Arlak Sorlakson!” shrilled a familiar voice. “Halt, driver!”

  My head jerked. I took in the driver’s colours, and almost lost my grip on the bird. A silent curse, ‘Oh, larathi!’ What awful timing!

  The takibuge crunched to a stop. The door creaked, the footman muttering obsequiously as he adjusted the alighting-step. I drew myself up, careful to keep my gaze modest and low. The Honoria Telmak–Rubiny’s mother, no less–was a commanding woman, rumoured to keep her husband in strict tow.

  I soothed the iridescent red-feathered head with a fingertip. “Hush, little one.”

  The lady stepped down, doubtless surveying the scene–my trader’s cart with its great ironbound wheels, drawn to the wayside behind a smaller family wain, and a family of six children and their mother enjoying a picnic lunch beneath the pungent wattle trees whilst I attended their pet.

  “Honoria Telmak,” said I, paying homage the traditional way. This involved holding a fluid and deep bow, with the left hand clasping the parakeet behind my back and the right burshingling just above her turquoise, sequined slippers, which were back-stitched in the Zeasi style, fifteen ukals a pair or I was no trader. “I’m indescribably honoured by your–”

  “Huh!” she sniffed. “Empty pleasantries, Arlak Sorlakson!”

  I held the bow stiffly, waiting her approval before rising. My fingers were growing tired with all that stupid wriggling burshingling demanded, and I could hear the family behind me–all girls, mark my words–whispering and giggling together. The Honoria’s glare burned a hole to eternity in the nape of my neck, while a thumping hangover, carefully cultivated over three days of most enjoyable carousing at Yuthalia, Elaki Fountain’s premier pleasure house, did my cause little aid.

  Her right slipper tapped away fiercely. But why this barely-concealed rage–unless it concerned my last altercation at Telmak Lodge? In which case she should instead be gloating at how Rubiny had dealt with me!

  “Rise!”

  I raised my aching skull to a precise degree, and extended my hand. “Master Telmak.”

  “Never mind that!” snapped the Honoria, slapping her husband’s hand down. “What have you done to my daughter, you wastrel whelp of a sow?”

  A wordless squeak passed my throat.

  She spat, “What. Have. You. Done? Speak!”

  “Done, me? Nothing, of course, nothing–”

  “Nothing? Is that all you have to say? Nothing?”

  “B-But … I have not laid a finger upon the daughter of the House–”

  “If you had dared lay a finger upon her person, I’d have it chopped off in a trice!” The Honoria Telmak shook her head so violently that a bejewelled hairclip flew past my nose to lance into the soft sward. “What did you say to her Rushday last, you … you stinking sodbuster? I checked the records. You were there that very day, you cannot deny it! Why, she came to me in tears! My own daughter, in tears over a useless, philandering male!”

  “Rubiny was–”

  “Silence, husband!” she roared. “If I wanted an opinion I would ask those good women, who this rake is doubtless terrorising with his lecherous, stinking panting as he plots how best to despoil them all–why, even down to this little one, who in Mata’s precious name must be barely five anna if she’s a day!”

  Her insults were leaves snatched away by a rushing stream. I reeled at the notion that Rubiny had been crying over me! She didn’t care a whit … did she? My feet itched to dance a rowdy jig! But I was forced to straighten my lips, especially when the little girl piped up:

  “Mummy, I’m nearly seven, aren’t I? Why’s the rich lady so cross? What’s a rake?”

  “What are you grinning at?” the Honoria demanded, her chin a-quiver in wrath. My lips compressed themselves instantly into a thin white line. “When I learn what you did to my daughter, Arlak Sorlakson, you’d better wish all of Ulim’s demonic Hunt were loose on your trail! I’ll ruin you and your miserable little enterprise, mark me! Fancy, the gall, upsetting my Rubiny! Now, what have you to say for yourself?”

  How could I respond? I tried from my height not to appear as though I towered above her; I schooled my eyes from straying to the provocative cut of her gown–for she was Rubiny’s mother, after all, and the daughter had clearly inherited her mother’s charms–and deliberately imagined tumbling her in a hay barn. Inappropriate? Shallow? Ay to both marks. But this silent rebellion was proof against my humiliation, an act of revenge confined to my thoughts alone.

  “Huh! I thought as much!”

  “I swear, I’ve done nothing to–”

  “Nothing again? Be silent! I’ll be the judge of your nothings!”

  Judge and executioner both, thought I.

  Now the Honoria Telmak called to the family, “Has he been harassing you?”

  “No, I–”

  “One more word out of you!”

  “He was looking after Jewel!” The little girl came running up. “See?”

  “Who is … Jewel?”

  “Her parakeet,” explained the mother in a flustered rush.

  “Jewel hurt her wing and the nice man made it better! Look, see, he’s stitched her wing with magic string!”

  The Master Telmak interjected, “Indeed, with silk of Gethamadi.”

  “Gethamadi silk? What does a vegetable farmer know of Gethamadi silk?”

  “He sewed Jewel’s wing better!”

  The Honoria seemed taken aback. Clearly, my little champion was doing far better than I at mastering the situation. I opted for a careful nod. “It is a hobby, Honoria Telmak. Eventide in the mountains can be lonely.”

  “And a fine job you’ve made of it,” the Master of Telmak Lodge added, scratching the parakeet’s head with an expert touch. “You’ve healing hands, Arlak Sorlakson.”

  His eyes twinkled conspiratorially as he stole back into the Honoria’s shadow, the very picture of a demure and dutiful husband. He moved oddly, I noticed, like a man twice his anna. But I knew I held his sympathy. And he had provided a graceful exit for the Honoria, which after a pause to regain her poise, she duly assumed.

  “I remain extremely dissatisfied with your conduct, young Arlak,” she huffed, squaring up to me again. “Just because you’ve a pretty face does not permit you to entertain ideas above your station. Rubiny o’Telmak is the fairest flower of a fine and rising House, with wonderful prospects and a future that expressly excludes Matabond vows with a man of your spendthrift reputation and lowly occupation!”

  “Yes, Honoria.” I had long since given
up on Rubiny, so what loss this? Nonetheless, sweat trickled down my nape.

  I might even escape lightly, I had begun to hope, when she tittered, “You have my permission to apologise to my daughter, Arlak Sorlakson. Next time you sojourn at Telmak Lodge, you will grovel in the dirt in the forecourt as the wicked wastrel you are and thrice declare to the heavens the depths of your wrongdoing. You will beg Rubiny’s forgiveness. If fortune smiles upon you, she may grant you the slipper’s toe to kiss.”

  Thus leaving me aghast and gaping, the Honoria Telmak swept back to her takibuge, alighted with the aid of her husband’s arm, and snapped a command to proceed. In the dust-clouds of her passing, all six girls raced up to me, jabbering excitedly:

  “Who was that?”

  “Who’s Rubiny? Tell us about Rubiny!”

  “Ooh, this is so exciting!”

  “Mummy, what’s a wastrel?”

  “Girls, now girls, please! Let the man breathe!”

  “Ooh, he is pretty, mother, don’t you agree? I thought so the moment I saw him! Look, his ears are turning bright pink!”

  Ay, in such disgrace did I begin my return journey to Yarabi Vale.

  Chapter 3: Janos

  No blade cuts keener than the knife-edge of betrayal.

  Old Roymerian Proverb

  Foul clouds scudded toward me on a capricious easterly wind like slate roof-tiles flung by an irate giant. The chill was unseasonable. From the clouds, tendrils of mist seeped down to brush the barren cart-track with clammy tentacle-tips, obscuring what was ordinarily a fine view from the crest of Hadla’s Pass down the length of Yarabi Vale to my home. A few dozen farmholds were sprinkled along its loam-rich floor, and a tiny clutch of mountain croftholds lay buried beneath the pass.

  The village was named after the rare yarabi bird, whose flaming plumage had once graced the finery of Hassutls and nobles. The vale had enjoyed a fleeting notoriety, attracting fortune-hunters from as far afield as Lorimere, Sulikarn and the eastern isles of the Aenkal Archipelago. They wiped out the gorgeous birds within seven anna. Many a yarn did the ulules spin, claiming renewed sightings and good-luck feathers. Janos himself was a believer.