The Legend of El Shashi

by Marc Secchia

  Have you ever killed a man in order to make it possible to kill other men? They brought me a prisoner. I killed him. This summoned the Wurm. Panicked, I ran at the Lymarians with all the grace of a long-legged, clucking lyom fleeing the butcher’s cleaver. They tried to kill me.

  This time, I lost my nerve. The Wurm surged out of the sod and chased me across the valley, all the way to the Lymarian camp, before a withering hail of javelins convinced me to run a different course. I had just started back when the Wurm vanished beneath the soil again, the trail of its passage marked by a freshly ploughed ridge of soil and sod connecting our two camps. I was fortunate one of their darts did not spit me as a farmer spits a hog for the Doublesun Cahooday bonfire.

  Freyal had Tomak discuss my failure of heart with me–but not too vigorously. He needed his no-longer-secret weapon alive, and able to run. This cut short Tomak’s favourite threat of breaking my kneecaps. But he was nothing if not creative.

  What was needed, Freyal declaimed, was a different strategy. Tens of men were not enough. He wanted to slaughter hundreds, if not thousands.

  I crawled miserably into my tent and tried to stanch the bleeding of my nose and lips. I dared not heal myself.

  And I no longer had any companions to tend my wounds. Freyal removed them, but they would have shunned me anyway. I missed Salk’s constant grousing. Janos’ voice seared my conscience. I wanted to believe I was so afraid of Freyal, I had no choice but to do his bidding. But there were worse enemies trapped within the walls of my skull.

  Two makh before dioni orison, or dawn, Tomak tapped my shoulder. “Do it.”

  In the murky, cloud-obscured moonlight, the inner sentry line of the Lymarian camp was nought but shadows upon shadows. The raiding party had silently garotted three men in the outer circle and replaced them with our own. Our soldiers clustered around me, close enough to smell the oily-sweat of their armour.

  I turned to the prisoner. He was half-dead already–a sword thrust near the heart I could have healed with a touch. Instead, I killed him artfully. How depressing to choose the most painless method to murder a man. To have this power over life, but nought over my own. Scant time for thought. The ground beneath my feet was already a-tremble.

  That was Wurm-sign.

  Doubled over in a scuttling, hunchbacked beetle run, I set off toward the Lymarian camp. I would have to rely on speed and surprise to take me past the remaining sentries. The Wurm was unpredictable. Though I could sense a wrongness, a peculiar silence as the night birds and insects keeping still perhaps in fear, the beast did not surface immediately this time, but instead, I heard a prolonged, rumbling groan as though the earth itself were suffering a colossal case of indigestion. The camp yet slumbered. But the sentries exclaimed in alarm as I barrelled past them.

  “Halt!”

  I felt something score my right side, perhaps a blade, but kept right on running–my life depended on speed. Don’t look! Don’t stop! I couldn’t help myself. Terror will do that to a man.

  Just before I reached the serried ranks of tents, I chanced a backward glance to see if I might glimpse the Wurm.

  At once, I saw a disturbance. A heaving wave of scrubby grasses and low, redolent sulg bushes surged towards me at about the pace of a man walking with a purpose, borne on the back of rising clods of earth and boulders shifted from their foundations deep beneath the soil. I gasped aloud, “It has grown! Oh Mata save me! It wants to feed!”

  Even in the dim moonlight, there was no mistaking how the snaking, lengthening mound dogged my path, how easily the unseen bulk thrust the earth aside, how it ascended with ominous intent …

  Ah! What terrors lacerated my quoph! For it seemed to me the beast longed for nought but to sate its craving with human flesh; that from its inception it was Nethe-bent on destruction; that this appetite for unregenerate malevolence was somehow reflected or rooted in my own being; and that the wellspring of it all must be Ulim himself–the snake in my quoph.

  The plan was to run the Wurm through the camp. In my hands rested the power to break the Lymarians. I was the whip, the lightning-bolt from a clear sky. If only our cause were just. If only I could believe in the war.

  If only I could believe at all.

  My foot caught on an exposed root. I crashed to my knees. In that instant, the beast passed by beneath my body. I saw, not three paces beyond my outstretched hands, several dark appendages break free of their earthy encumberment. The Wurm’s insectoid body slithered into the open. The rasp of its segments across the ground sounded like heavy, aged leather scraped across stone. It hurtled onward, scarcely changing direction, directly into the heart of the Lymarian encampment.

  The screams began.

  Scrambling to my feet, I tried to ascertain the beast’s whereabouts. A solid band of clouds had drifted across the moons. Men rushed in all directions, making the site resemble a termite-hill vigorously stirred by a stick. Finding myself well shielded in the general mayhem, I trotted on, angling to my right hand, trusting and dreading that at some point, the Wurm would start to seek me out–and if I did not maximise the damage, I would have Freyal and Tomak to answer to.

  Would I ever be motivated by ought but fear itself? Mata forgive …

  Suddenly I heard a commotion behind the nearest line of tents. Feelers loomed over a ridge-pole. I broke at once into a dead sprint, caring not where I ran.

  Ay, this chase lasted until the song of morn thrilled the air–so much longer than before, I was physically shattered by the time the Wurm went to ground. I barely had strength left to stumble back to our lines, collapsing thrice on the way and once more within sight of my tent. Nobody helped me. I resorted to crawling.

  In the grim pastels of a bloody sunrise the Lymarian camp lay dazed, as though struck by an avalanche. Broken bodies beyond counting dotted the rubble. Bald vultures had flocked there in their hundreds, boldly picking at the rich booty. Men I had counted comrades flinched at the sight of me.

  I crumpled half-atop my bedroll, and lay insensate until the night was well advanced.

  Then I woke, sweating and shouting and thrashing, from a nightmare filled with Ulim himself. The Death-God was robed in the snowy white of deepest Darkenseason, and his breath was an ice-storm. From the train of his robe whistled glacial winds and sudden blasts of ice and snow. I was his thrall. I was his footman, lashing his carriage through a frozen Alldark wasteland. ‘Death-bringer!’ cried he, regarding my cringing form with malevolent glee. ‘Child of my heart! Seek you to fill Nethe’s long halls by the deeds of your own hand?’

  Truly told, never had the breath of demons felt so close. I imagined they might come rushing through the tent-flap any instant. My hands trembled so hard I twice knocked the lantern to the ground trying to light it. The very darkness within my tent pulsed and oozed with an oily malice. Predatory fangs and blood-dipped claws lurked in every corner, while evil licked my quoph with a tongue of ice. Beneath the blankets, my body shivered as though it possessed an icy core that would never thaw again.

  I looked around frantically. But there was nothing there.

  Your deeds will feed my Wurm. How right, how unimaginable, those words had now been proven. These days, with the white of death all about me, Jyla’s evil felt fused to my immortal quoph; fused with unbreakable bonds. Daily I tasted the ash of her smoky conjuration in the back of my throat. If this was all that Janos’ death was worth, then what was the point of living? How many now lay murdered at my hand?

  Ay, this thing I had become. This beast that lurked inside … who was the beast now? Arlak, or the Wurm? Could I but end my own life … and yet I could not. I would never give that sorcerous vulture the pleasure of driving me to ruin. I would yet live to employ the power for good, and every time I did, I would gloat at her description of my inevitable misdeeds. I would be stronger than Jyla counted on, more stubborn than she cared for, and resist her wiles and devices to the end of life and bone. So I resolved.

  In the darkest makh of that
night, I struck upon a plan.

  Soon, the Wurm would rise no more.

  “They’re calling you the ‘Scourge of the Westland’,” Freyal cried, clapping me cheerfully upon the shoulder. “After we destroyed Sulakin, the Lymarians sent a delegation to sue for peace. But the terms were not to my liking.”

  I bit my tongue, muttering, ‘That is, my dear Freyal, after I destroyed Sulakin Town for you.’ A simple disguise had won Tomak and I through the gates. We were meant to pick a victim, but I stopped Tomak’s heart instead. Good riddance. When the Roymerian army trapped me trying to steal out of town, I blamed the Wurm for his death.

  Sulakin was nigh the end of me too. Buildings slowed the Wurm until it learned to dive beneath them, to buckle walls with its back, and to appear in unexpected places rather than blindly thrashing after me as before. Grephe alone turned my stride aside a jerlak’s snort before the Wurm collapsed the road not three strides ahead of my racing boots. Hot cinnamon breath blasted my back as I dived into a side alleyway and made good my escape. ‘The Wurm learns,’ I repeated to myself. Was the Nethespawned demon beast maturing? Or was it just luck, or Gods-play, that the chase turned out that way?

  Houses crushed. Children screaming. Jatha bellowing. Lyoms squawking. Men tearing their faces in despair. Families and lives torn apart in a flash. Images of murder swarmed in my mind. The Wurm, unleashed, was an indiscriminate fury shaped by the paths I chose to run. In a moment of Doublesun-madness these deeds required no thought. But afterward …

  “What you see before you, is the remnant of their army.” The Hassutl chuckled evilly. “Today, Arlak, you have it in your hands to end this war. Now go. Join the ranks.”

  The strategy was simple. Hide amongst our militias. When the battle was joined, kill a prisoner and make merry–Freyal’s term again–on the Lymarian side. He was not concerned if a few men of Roymere ‘stood in the wrong place’.

  I did not share his optimism. End the war? Freyal was a man of war. His ambitions would not be limited to resolving a simple border dispute. Already, during the nightly strategy and planning sessions in the great pavilion, he spoke of conquests, of new alliances, and renegotiating the ancient land contracts, for in those days Roymere was carved into many fiefdoms each ruled by one of the great Lines. What reason had he to stop now? And he was in daily drum-contact with Jyla, telling her every detail of my misdeeds. She must be agog with pleasure. Her black-in-black eyes haunted my dreams all the more.

  The prisoner was a Lymarian veteran who had taken a javelin-thrust into his bowels so deep it had fractured his backbone. The puncture-wound was gangrenous. Truly told, I was surprised he still lived.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, touching him.

  I chased a man’s Mata-born quoph from his body. Forgive my iniquity …

  The Wurm rose with shocking speed. All the warning I had was a tiny, premonitory tremble beneath my feet before the beast surged out of the ground, twice, three times the height of a man with the power of its thrust, and, bellowing as it fell, scattered friend and foe in all directions.

  BRRAOOMM!

  Had I dared pray the Wurm would be crushed by its own weight in the fall, I was sore disappointed. Indeed, I was knocked aside as it snatched the dead prisoner from my hand, and this provided a helpful boost to my retreat. The great bellows-noise started behind me, huffing in my direction, and the screams began.

  Thank Mata for long legs and a fit body. I stretched my legs on the uphill run toward the main Lymarian force. I sliced my roundshield’s leather stays off my left forearm and dropped the weight without second thought. No need for that anymore. I yanked my helm loose. Several more pounds of metal tumbled away. Given half a chance I would ditch the thigh plates as well. Men were not meant to run in armour! Our unit Onelead believed in running through muddy fields in full armour was essential training for ‘soft farm boys’–and while I had cursed him for a whole season, which was the length of my induction to the ranks, now I thanked him with my every breath.

  Once I broke into the clear, I slowed. Where to now? I could not hear the Wurm, could not see it. Larathi! Keep moving, Arlak. Two brass terls to a Lortiti Real said the beast was somewhere nearby. I trotted on, scanning the ground ahead, trying to regather my breath. Be cursed to Nethe if I was going to let some overgrown insect get the better of me!

  I too was minded of a shadworm. The interlocking body rings, the burgundy hue of its armoured carapace, the multi-jointed feelers … how under the heavens did Jyla plan to use the power the Wurm garnered from these events? I had to find out more about the Sorceress and her designs on my life. But where to begin? Was it magic that allowed her Wurm to move so easily above or below ground, through soil and even rock? Why did it feed so voraciously upon people–was that the source of its strength and growth? Since my last run the creature had doubled its length again, or I was no judge.

  Filling my boots with scorn, I said to my surroundings, “What are you planning to do, Arlak? Take a tailor’s measure of the beast for its new robes? Ha! Robes of sallinen and the finest burnoose for that overgrown maggot-body?”

  Ah! Just a trin or so ahead was a clump of boulders in which I could hide; see off this appearance of the Wurm.

  What was that? My legs halted of their own accord. I peered at the rocks. How queer–was something moving in there? My nape prickled as though a troop of fire-ants were investigating my collar for food. I felt a flicker of grephe at odds with my rational self. “Don’t be silly, Arlak,” I grunted. “Conserve your energy.” Two more paces, just ten or so short of the boulders now. Halt again. Peering. “That’s no branch, stupid. That’s–”

  KERUMM! The rocks exploded outwards, slower than I believed possible, yet faster than I could react. Desperately back-peddling, I tripped and thumped down on my rump. A boulder spun end-over-end toward me. My eyes had time to widen before it briefly trapped my foot, and rolled on. Unthinking, I used my power to slam down the pain. No! Go, Arlak! Diving to one side. Rolling over and over, using the slope, my arms and legs flailing to keep me moving as fast as possible.

  The ground heaved and buckled as the Wurm ravenously gobbled up the earth behind my tumbling body. At least half its length lay buried in that single movement. I scrambled away, bad foot or none.

  I must heal myself. I forced the power inward.

  The ground shook again.

  The wind fluttered in my ears as I found my stride. My crushed foot, I healed instantly. A burst of sheer terror bought me a lead, but at a pace I could not hope to sustain. Soon, the beast closed in again. ‘Sherrwweeeekk!’ was the sound of its shriek, like the call of a hunting falcon, but ten times greater.

  I forced myself to slow, to regulate the frantic rhythm of my heart. I looked inward. And it seemed to me then that I began to hear Janos’ voice chanting indistinctly in the distance. The haunting cries of sea-birds tingled in my ears. By degrees, my feet began to strike the ground ever more softly until it felt as though I were flying rather than running; that my arms were wings and my mind observed my flight from a place apart from my body; that the hypnotic flow of Janos’ voice had transported me to a place beyond myself, a place where no effort was required to outrun the wind.

  That makh, I discovered a certain joyful purity in the act of running. The smooth interworking of ligaments and muscles, the flexion and extension of joints, diaphragm, and ribcage powering the lungs, heart pumping gouts of life-sustaining blood through my system–I grasped how marvellous an organism was my body, appreciating it in wholly new ways with the benefit of Jyla’s curse.

  I felt invincible. Though a few Lymarians spread out to try to catch me, and they cast their darts, to my heightened senses they were slow and clumsy. I was a zephyr, blowing where I pleased. Instinct supplied my balance. Running stripped away the non-essentials; gave me respite from my cares. Even a dagger’s slash did not slow my headlong rush. I thought, and was healed.

  So I blew through the Lymarian camp that day, and kept right on
sprinting into the deep forest beyond. Freyal would never find me. The noise of the Wurm slowly fell behind. Boughs and hanging vines slapped my face. Roots threatened to trip me, but I hurdled them with breakneck abandon. Cuts and bruises gave me no pause.

  After a long time, as golden Suthauk dripped into Belion’s white eye, peeping just above the forested, hilly horizon, and the better portion of a day had been expended in my flight, I realised that the Wurm was gone.

  I was alone with my ghosts.

  Chapter 11: The Slipper’s Toe

  Love? A pox on the notion! Why, I buy it by the potion,

  And toss it into the ocean.

  Is love not born inside a lie, a pretty pastime till we die?

  Mark it mine? Fie!

  Then why do I pine, stare into my wine, refuse to dine?

  If I be not … thine?

  Popular Hakooi Ballad, Anon

  As I recall, that day set my feet upon a fresh course. No longer was I Arlak no-name. I was Arlak, Scourge of the Westland. That, if I could, I would have cast this title to the ground, spit upon it, and crush every last syllable into dust with my boot-heel, mattered nought. What I had wrought in the seasons of the Lymarian war felt abhorrent. That boy I had been before, that puppy in the pleasure-house, was dead. Now, in the season of my ruin and Ulim’s triumph, I understood at last what I was not. Jyla would have me become that monster of the Westland. Give her the pleasure? May I wither and rot at the thought!

  The drive to make atonement exhausted me. For the sake of my quoph and my sanity, I took upon myself a new mantle and a new name. As I tramped the byways of rural Roymere, plying my new trade, I began to call myself El Shashi.

  Janos spent anna schooling me in Dusky Fahric, which is the scholarly tongue, seldom known by common folk. But a few phrases enjoy wide renown. They are woven into every ulule’s repertoire. This phrase ‘El Shashi’, which means ‘worker of wonders’, is oft used on stage and in fable to signify a moment at which a story changes either through supernatural intervention or unexpected circumstance; its cusp or turning-point. The ulule or actor will don a blue cap or ribbon that denotes Mata’s favour, or dress in white to denote Ulim’s vindictive pleasure. For me, El Shashi stood for all that I wanted to become, both in quoph and in deed.