by Marc Secchia
Surina screamed.
I found my feet in a flash, dashing to the doorway ahead of Chiliz. Outside the night was clear–for earlier snow had fallen afresh, but now the clouds had blown away, leaving the brilliant, brittle starlight to dust the snowbound fields and forest–and the children shrunk back, clinging to my legs. I, too, felt my bowels become as water. Jerlak! Thousands strong. Everywhere … surrounding the small crofthold, some as close as five paces from us, dark, hulking jerlak were standing stock-still, as one beast facing inward and staring.
At me.
Dear Mata preserve! At my elbow, Chiliz made a soft exclamation of distress.
My eyes leaped to and fro as a bird might panic when trapped indoors. We were an island in a dark ocean. I had never seen; never heard of such numbers, not even in an ulule’s drunken boast. Truly told, Hakooi’s demesne has much dense and trackless wilderness, particularly toward the Nugar River, which borders Hakooi and Lorimere to their southern aspect, and cuts their rich plains off from the southern deserts … but this! The night was thick with their musky odour. I could hear them huffing. Puffs of condensation rose from a thousand muzzles, rising above the thicket of horn-points, but as the span marched on they stood eerily still. Watching. There was no need for such a concentration. Twenty would have sufficed to raze this village. Two or three could have made short work of any crofthold.
“What is this?” breathed Chiliz.
“Mata save us, I’ve no idea,” I whispered back. Chiliz began to whisper prayers without pause to draw breath.
The herd began to stir, to drift. I, frowning, saw a path develop and lengthen before me. The animals were turning inward. Those alongside the path lowered themselves ponderously upon their forelegs and dipped their heads, until each animal’s foremost set of horns touched the churned-up, muddy snow. Behind them others bowed their necks too. My heart hammered in my chest like Janos’ forge at its peak blast. The night was infused with an eerie, breathless magic. In Mata’s name, what was happening?
Suddenly there appeared, advancing with stately step and noble mien through the ranks of the obeisant throng, a giant bull jerlak, fully a head taller than a man standing upright, red of eye, and with pelt of such a pure white that it rivalled the very starlight for beauty. Hooves soundless upon the snow. Horns wider than my outstretched arms. Shoulders stuffed with rolling boulders, so massive was his musculature. The dewlap depending from his barrel-chest swept nearly to the ground. In every respect of splendour, this beast surpassed an ulule’s wildest tale. I fought an urge to bend my knee. I knew I stood in the presence of royalty.
About halfway along that path, the albino bull stopped and turned, presenting me his left flank.
“Ah!” I breathed. Now I knew my part.
Weak-kneed, I pressed my shrinking flesh forward. I tried not remind myself that by all wisdom common to men, I was like as not committing suicide. I tried not to dwell upon the forest of horns arrayed about my person, nor consider how jerlak are regarded the cruellest and most temperamental of animals. Truly told, I set my eyes upon the darts embedded in the great jerlak’s flank and shoulder, and the scabbed blood that crusted his hide, and prayed I would not faint. I clenched my jaw lest I chip a tooth from the violent spasms racking my body.
If animals could smell fear, I was a dead man.
Curiously, I did not sense animosity from the albino lord. I had a dent in my buttock and a scar graven upon my lower back by which to remember my last encounter with a jerlak. But as I drew near–overshadowed, indeed, by the sheer bulk of the beast beside whom the jatha of my youth seemed as mere calves–the pale eyes bent around to consider me, and the pink nostrils scented my outstretched hand, and with a ‘harrumph!’ he appeared to accept my presence. Still, a restless flicking of his tail, and the quiver of muscles beneath my hand, betrayed his misgivings.
At last, I felt my courage rise up.
“So, a hunter found you?” I whispered, venturing to touch the first wound with my fingertips. “Nay, worse, this is the haft of a riverboat harpoon.” Barbed, fearfully difficult to withdraw without rending and ruining the flesh. “You swam the Nugar’s width?”
The jerlak snorted above my ear as if to say, ‘And what is that to you?’
Struck by a memory, I added, “The Frenjj call you Thurbarak–the white thundering mountain. To think I dismissed you as a fable!”
This time, the huff of breath definitely conveyed a snigger.
From the Eldrik athocaries, I had learned many effective techniques for dulling pain. So the animal felt little but the pressure of my belt-knife upon his flesh as I sliced the wounds open and drew out the thrice-barbed harpoon-head. What had become of the fisherman? One flange of the weapon was a mere hand’s breadth from the lungs. A puncture there would have been fatal. But instead, all I had to deal with was suppurating flesh wounds and the bloody results of my own handiwork.
As I finished reknitting the albino bull’s skin and encouraging the pelt to regrow in Mata’s good time, I realised with a start that most of the herd had, by twos and threes, melted away into the darkness.
“There, done.” I patted the velveteen hide one last time. “Good as the makh you were born.”
The bull lowered his great head. His half-lidded eyes were depthless, full of a restless intelligence that marked my measure and more. A thought entered my head: We two beings are unique in all Mata’s world. Let us therefore bind peace between us.
I lifted my hand. “Go in peace, Great One.”
The albino bull whirled on his hoof and thundered away. Before I exhaled the breath I was holding, he had vanished into the Alldark night.
And my heart was full of Mata’s presence.
Chapter 24: The Running Man
Sanity? Mark my words: a bitter illusion,
For I find ‘neath the suns,
All is but shades of madness.
Phari al’Mahi kin Saymik, Which Way, El Shashi?
Fog clung to the valleys as a heavy, wet cloth.
It was in this murk I entered Sillbrook, a town of blocky thatch-roofed houses with broad overhanging eaves and flower-lined wooden verandas out front where the locals loved nothing more than to sit–in better weather, I own–and share beer and gossip in equally generous quantities. I heard a man shouting in the marketplace. Was he crazy? Some of his taunts clearly were. But the more I heard, the more I wondered, until I sought him out in the busy thoroughfare.
I watched a boy pelting him with turnips. The stocks were already plastered with jatha-droppings and all manner of rotten fruit and vegetable matter.
The man fixed a wildly rolling eye upon the boy. “Take you care, little swine!” he cackled, “for I foresee the swine will take care of you!”
The boy hurled another overripe turnip, accurately. The man shook his head and spat pieces out of his mouth. His eyes lit upon another target. “Tark! Hiee, hoo, yiddely do! Tark! Your wife prefers the yammarik’s bed to you!”
The crowds drifting by found this funny. The man Tark did not, for he turned and, running to the stocks, struck the madman such a buffet with his fist that I saw a tooth pop out of his mouth. Then he made to grab the man’s jaw and shake him. What followed was too quick for me to note, but Tark suddenly fell backwards, clutching his hand. The crazy man chewed with a beatific smile. He opened his mouth and pushed out his tongue to show everyone the end of Tark’s finger.
Then, in a completely different, guttural snarl, he cried, “Blood! I love blood!”
My heart flopped inside my chest as a sleeper, after moaning at a nightmare, rolls to his other side.
Someone near me cried out, “Demon-possessed! Mata encircle our hearth!”
Now the man stood upright, lifting the huge metal stocks padlocked to his neck and arms with ease. I saw they had been triple-chained to the ground–something atypical, for no ordinary man could have lifted such a weight. And he had the build of a wraith, not a wrestler. Furthermore, I saw the man’s waist was chained to
the monolithic speaker’s platform behind him–a single block of sandstone quarried of old, which had to weigh upward of ten tons.
I turned to the fellow who had spoken. “Truly told–he is possessed?”
He spat between us, sign against bad luck. “You must be new in town, not to have heard of that man Sathak! He has been terrorising us for anna, stealing our livestock, breaking into houses, murdering our sons and daughters! He will be executed on the morrow. And a better riddance knows no man!”
As if he had heard these words, Sathak’s eyes swivelled towards us. A sweet voice issued from his lips, almost female, if it were not for the sibilant hiss that accompanied it, “Ah, if it isn’t my old friend El Shashi! Come to gloat, have we? Better still … you think you can heal me, don’t you?”
Sathak descended into hysterical giggles as half the town, it seemed, turned to gape at me. Faces drew closer, peering through the mist.
“Come on, El Shashi! Heal me!”
I snapped my burnoose purposefully and called, “Of what use would that be, you murderer? You will be executed on the morrow!”
“Now, now, El Shashi!” The laughter burst forth again, high and sweet and more chilling than the ice-storm which had delayed my arrival in Sillbrook. “Come closer, little man. Tell these good people how you don’t believe in demons!”
A low, ugly muttering issued from the crowd as I shook my head.
“Then why don’t you heal me? Better that than condemn an afflicted man to death! Ah, I am sore afflicted! Sick, and cursed! Heal me, El Shashi!”
Mata-cursed indeed, I thought, hurriedly weighing my options. A thousand watching eyes drilled into my neck and shoulders like wood-boring bees tunnelling into a rotting log. The silence lengthened, until someone suddenly shouted, “Ay, heal the man, El Shashi!” As if it had released a pent-up hunger in the crowd, this cry was immediately taken up by others. “Ay! Don’t kill him, heal him!”
Oh, Larathi! I had been intending to leave the whole situation behind, but now my hand had been forced. Slowly, greatly reluctance, I walked towards Sathak. He smacked his lips obscenely, probably intent on gaining another finger to chew upon. Good of the townspeople not to want to have a man killed, no matter his deeds. Unfortunately this man had recognised me–how, I know not. Was his insight demonic in origin? Or simply ill luck?
I would have to touch him. Not the head, nor the hands, I told myself, biting my lip. How I wished I was a Warlock, able to cast magic from afar!
The closer I drew, the more animated Sathak appeared. White froth dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He spat out a bit of finger. Suddenly, a flurry of voices emerged at once, “Salcat got your tongue?” in the woman’s voice, and “Give me blood!” and a new shriek, “Magic! Oh, great El Shashi!” followed by a childish plea, “Please, please let them kill me! I can’t bear it any longer,” and much insane laughter, not unlike the cackles and whistling shrieks of a crazed lyom fleeing a salcat.
My feet halted of their own accord. I examined him narrowly, wondering if I would ever be able to command my own body at times like these. Perhaps his problem was similar to the people P’dáronï studied, those with several different personalities? Nevertheless, lyomflesh covered my arms. But after a long moment’s consideration, my natural stubbornness won out. Demons? Ha! Ulule’s tales, the better to frighten fools and little children. Was I not El Shashi? Who was this wretch to bait me?
Circling behind him, I reached out hesitantly. I touched Sathak’s shoulder with the very tip of my forefinger.
“Ah, ha ha ha!” roared a voice. “New blood!”
I staggered as an unseen hammer struck me between the eyes. I felt scrabbling, scratching, an intense pressure. Lights as incandescent as if I were staring into Belion’s burning eye exploded in my mind. Immediately I lashed out in self-defence and self-preservation, sweeping the assault back, and with my magic unleashed in soaring, wild song, dove into Sathak’s mind with one thought, ‘Vengeance!’
At once I found myself blinded. At least a dozen voices, if not more, shrieked and babbled at me out of the darkness. I took swipe after clumsy swipe, but they oozed and slipped around my flailing with dismaying ease–hooting, tittering, screaming all manner of defiance and the foulest abuse and obscenities imaginable. In it all, there was neither sign nor trace of the man Sathak, nor anything I recognised as human.
Suddenly the growling voice rose to prominence over the others and roared, “Your blood, El Shashi! Now feel my true strength!”
Sathak pounced. Turning, he clubbed me to the ground with the stocks and somehow managed to wind his legs around my torso, trapping my left arm but leaving the right free. He arched his back and bore down with insane force.
Bellowing in pain, I struggled like a snared animal. Nothing I could do would break his hold. My ribs bent and creaked, compressing my lungs until I felt as though I wrestled a python. I beat his face bloody, tore at his eyes, jabbed my elbow repeatedly in his throat, but all was futile. Surely no man living could be possessed of such strength? I could not withstand much longer.
My reaction was instinctive. Drawing deep and long of the lillia, I shovelled it inward to reinforce my skeleton, my musculature, my tendons, ligaments and joints, in a desperate, scattershot attempt at shoring up my failing body. But even as the pain receded, I was having second thoughts: ‘Nothing selfish, Arlak! Don’t be selfish! Don’t do it or you’ll summon the Wurm!’
Why should I not protect my own life?
But I was maddened with pain. Deliberately, I reached into my storehouses and loosed the power in a way I had never loosed it before. It reared up like an ugly, hissing snake, ready for the strike. “Now you’ll pay, you thrice-cursed … it’s El Shashi you’re dealing with here!” I snarled, forcing my way into Sathak’s mind. “Begone, you Ulimspawn sons of Nethe! Be cleansed in the holy name of Mata!”
Swollen and swept away in my power and hubris, I whipped the shadows back into a corner of Sathak’s mind and confined them there with a wave of my hand. They seemed diminished now, pathetic, no match for Arlak blazing in the full panoply of his majestic rage. I strode forth a warrior, blazing as the Doublesun dawn in all its brilliance. Now, at last, I found something of the original man, and felt myself recoil in consternation. There was no good in him. The memories, the thoughts displayed to my godlike acuity, were ugly and twisted–he was a murderer, a thief, a bandit, an abuser of children, and unabashed of it all, long before the day that …
‘Oh larathi!’ I wailed inwardly. ‘Jyla! He is Jyla’s trap!’
“Yes,” hissed the snakelike voice. “She promised us your magic, El Shashi! Long have we awaited this day!”
The child’s voice added, “Kill me! Please! Let me die!”
Trapped! Jyla, once more, had outwitted and out-thought me.
Then I gritted my teeth. “No!” I shouted, and again, “No!” This time I held the upper hand. This time the tale would be told my way. And this man, Sathak, would bother Sillbrook Town no more.
Taking up the remnants of the man, I endeavoured to reshape him. Truly told, in the crudest fashion, I wished to wipe the slate clean and turn him into a worthy man.
I had no need of the ground’s trembling to inform me I had gone too far. I was already recoiling, hearing my own horrified reaction in my conscience, and Janos’ remonstrations echoing it. This was Mata’s domain. Who was I to meddle with another person’s quoph in this manner? Was I God? Here was a wickedness beyond recompense.
Unseeing of ought but my own selfish pride, I finally broke free of Sathak and, scrambling to my feet in sobbing haste, lurched into a run. Anywhere. I had to go. There was nothing for it, the Wurm was coming … and through my feet I felt a juddering earthquake, a damp dancing of pebbles upon the street. Thunder snarled somewhere overhead and flashes of lightning burned the mist. The crowd reacted, scattering in gabbling flight.
The backs of this thronging mass brought my flight up short. I had to shoulder my way through, pushing
past those already fleeing. Panicked, and because of the thick mist, I could not find the marketplace exit. That was when I tripped, and the weight of P’dáronï’s gifts in my pack flipped me over on the ground.
Brrrrooooaaaam!!
The ground cracked open with an ear-buffeting roar, greater even than the thunder which had preceded it. Rocks grated loose from their foundations. The ground groaned and heaved beneath me. Huge reddish feelers broke the surface, right next to Sathak. The great block of sandstone he was chained to disappeared into the Wurm’s wide open maw. As the Wurm rose to scent the moist morning air, for an instant the grinning madman was perched upon its nose for all the world as a man astride his favourite jatha.
With ponderous majesty, the Wurm bent in my direction. Several more of its huge rings slid smoothly out of the gargantuan hole rent in the middle of Sillbrook’s main road. I should have been finding my feet, but rather, I was transfixed by the sight of Sathak riding the Wurm. That maw could have swallowed him twenty times over. It was easily the width of the alehouse opposite, I thought, smooth and insectoid, and its segments were as well-defined as any shadworm’s.
Then the beast surged forward and down, intent on boring towards me, and a moment later all that was left of Sathak was a brief red stain on the lip of a new tunnel.
A gigantic mole-run of fractured stone and dirt began to pursue me.
I fled the marketplace, trying not to tread upon the fallen, those who had been trampled in the fatal crush. Once more, my hands were dipped in the blood of innocents. Once more, Arlak had failed and I left many bodies in the dust of my passing as I fled town through the wide, well-planned streets.
Southward I ran. South and east, trying to follow the Linnaka trading route that connected all the way to the southernmost settlements of the Fiefdom of Hakooi. Ay, due to my encounter with the albino jerlak, I already had in mind the Nugar–but my hope was that the warmer southern reaches of the Fiefdom would thin the snow-drifts. But this Thawing season was markedly late. Not a span of respite in the frost-bitten two days it took me to reach the Nugar, did I enjoy.