by Marc Secchia
I was the only person crazy enough–or desperate enough–to make that journey. Not a cart, not a soul was abroad. The snows were piled knee-deep, and the drifts higher than that. My boots sank into the clogging powder with dismaying ease, forcing me to run for makh on end with the high-stepping, graceless gait of a Rendik stork of the Frenjj marshlands.
Dear Mata, how would I survive this run? Several makh only, and I already wanted nothing more than a soft bed and a whole anna’s sleep. Ay, I had strength within. But as I stumbled into the everlasting darkness of that first night, slogging through league after league of snow and forest and growing pain, I had to draw deeper than ever before.
The following dioni orison I made brief pause at a roadside farm to buy bread, and there had a stroke of luck the yammariks call Mataboon, the good will of Mata. One of the hands was sweeping the yard, and as I approached him from the side, I saw on his neck the unmistakable scars left by a tygar’s paw. His left ear had been chewed off; his arm too needed my touch to restore the feeling below the elbow. While I tended him, I put to him my questions. A strange inkling of grephe touched my mind as though a salcat sharpened his claws upon my cortex. But he had no memory of his life before the attack.
“I don’t even remember my name!” he said wryly. “But I do have this.” He held out a silver Matabond locket for my inspection, which was a customary troth-gift in those parts. “It means I was Matabound, doesn’t it? Do you not agree?”
“By Hakooi custom indeed,” said I, moved in my quoph by the quiet pleading in his eyes. “It will hold a clipping of your wife’s hair, no?”
“Ay, that so. Here, mark my words …”
As he turned the locket over in his fingers, I saw the entwined runes ‘C’ and ‘M’ engraved on the back in a beautifully-enhanced version of the common script. And I was transported. I remembered stumbling upon Chiliz, clad in nought but her linen under-shift, washing her hair over a wooden bucket. I make to back out, wishing not to cast any stone into her still-fresh well of grief. I smiled in embarrassment when her eyes rose. A terrible vulnerability and loneliness was writ in every aspect of her countenance. ‘Maikal was his name,’ she said abruptly, touching the locket at her breast. ‘Look, we had these made. Seems silly now. How could Mata snatch him away? How could She?’
I had no answer, then.
But now I did.
Marvelling, I took the man’s hands in mine. “I believe your name is Maikal,” I said. “I spent last Alldark Week as guest to a fine woman called Chiliz, and her children, whose Matabond husband was believed killed by a tygar. She has a locket which is the twin of this one. Now, if you travel north to Sillbrook and … oof!”
I staggered as the man Maikal slumped into my arms.
I slapped his face gently. “Maikal, wake up! The Wurm is soon upon us.”
“You just came from Sillbrook?” inquired the innkeeper, vigorously scratching his bushy beard. It started just below his eyes and reached the middle of his chest in a hair-explosion of remarkable proportions. “How’d you do it?”
“Ay, by foot. Is the ferry running?”
“Can’t see how’s you’d make it by foot. This weather’s ‘nuff to freeze a man faster ‘n a fresh icicle.”
Even without his mumbling in that thicket he owned a beard, I thought crossly, I was having trouble following his clipped southern Hakooi accent.
“You’s from where, you say?”
“Roymere, by birth. Now, what say you of the ferry?”
“You something awful anxious to catch a boat,” he grunted. “It in’t running.”
“What would persuade it to run?”
The eyes flicked over my apparel. “In this cold? You either crazy or rich. My bet’s the first.”
“I can heal the sick as payment.”
“You don’t hear a no when it’s spoke, do you?”
I crammed the loaf of bread my last coin had bought me into my mouth and washed it down with gulps of rich golden ale. I was ravenous. Trying to keep myself going while on the run was challenge enough. Mata, my aching legs! And, by my best guess, another five days yet before the Wurm would leave me be.
The innkeeper’s eyebrows crawled into his hairline. I muttered, “Nice brew.”
“I heard tales. You not … El Shashi, are you?” I nodded, cheeks bulging. “And that monster–”
“Wurm.” He mumbled something incoherent, but undoubtedly obscene. After swallowing, I added, “In about a span or so the Wurm will be sniffing at my heels. I don’t suppose you own this place, do you? Can’t say as there’d be much left …”
For answer, the man yelled upstairs, “Horia! I’m going out! Take care of the customers, will you?” And, grabbing my arm, he practically ran me outside into the street. “Quick. Take my boat–it’s small. One thing. Just you leave it somewhere safe on the far side, above the high water mark. I’ll fetch it after the Thawing.”
Ah, the value of fear–as well I knew! In short order I was installed in his rowboat, and the man waded up to his waist in the freezing water to shove me out onto the river. I picked up the oars and tried to find my stroke.
“Mind the crocodiles!” he shouted by way of farewell. “And head upstream first or you’ll find yourself on the rocks!”
Luckily, for I am but a poor oarsman, the Nugar was a river broad and lazy. I pulled mightily. All I wanted was to put open water between me and the Wurm. Perhaps that would stop it? My eyes strained against the purple shadows of the deepening twilight. Was I already clear of the village? Or would the Wurm come right through … what was that? Over on the riverbank, a crashing amongst the tall loiol trees carried across the waters to my frightened ears. For a moment in silhouette, I saw the Wurm’s feelers saluting the stars. Then it descended toward Nethe again.
My nemesis stalked me yet.
I strained at the oars. Further. I needed to distance myself from the beast. Hopefully, on the far side of the Nugar, I would be able to cross the line of hills that divided the river from the southern desert, and the running would be easier there.
Chapter 25: Ploughing the Desert
I saw him then,
A slender dark tree,
Eagle swift, razor clawed,
Master of the Great Erg–
Desert Warrior!
Hakooi Traditional Ballad: South of the Nugar
The Dioni orison warmed my back as I descended an unexpected cliff, handhold by nervous handhold. How many times had Janos not advised, ‘It is the unexpected and unplanned that kills, Arlak! Learn to think before you act.’ A little thinking and planning while crossing the Nugar had seen me hide my pack, with its heavy books, deep within the trunk of an ancient bragazzar tree, guarding the brow of the last hill in stark solitude. Hastily, shivering in the chill pre-dawn air, I stripped off my burnoose and thexik trousers and stowed those too, leaving just my undershorts, shirt, and boots by way of clothing. Lightening the load. Hoping the desert air would warm up quickly, or I would make for a fine running icicle. My waterskins I secured at my belt, along with my knife–my trusty companion for so many a league. A hunk of cheese went in my breast pocket. I had nought else.
Despite my exhaustion, I whistled a cheerful ditty. Warmer air, not a trace of snow in sight, and below, a dusty-pale salt pan that stretched beyond the horizon. I was stripped to the essentials. Running would be easier now. If I could just negotiate this tricky cliff!
On a nearby outcropping, a violently scarlet lizard the length of my arm was taking in the early sunlight and watching me with alert disdain. Suddenly, it flicked its tail and skittered away across the rocks.
I must have scared it.
But just a pace or two further down, I began to sense through my fingertips what the lizard must have known. My careful progress changed at once into a desperate, breakneck slide. Thank Mata for a small section of scree below, for I fell onto it from a good height and avalanched my way to the bottom. Picked myself up. Dusted off my skinned knees and elbows. I was fortuna
te not to have broken a limb. I dashed off into the desert with all the speed I could muster.
My luck it was, less than a span later I stepped into a hole and snapped my left ankle instantly.
Perched therefore upon a handy rock, I was setting the bones straight–with care, given I expected to be running upon it on many more days and leagues–when I had a sudden flash of grephe and, glancing up, scanned the cliff-face I had descended. My gaze narrowed. Blink. Stones bursting outward. From a distance the explosion was slow and silent. By that grephe I witnessed the very instant the Wurm broke through, about fifty to seventy paces above the desert floor by my mark, and slid forth smoothly ring by ring, describing a graceful arc. It re-entered the ground as effortlessly as a butterfly landing upon a flower.
I shook my head, muttering, “How do you eat all that rock–magic or none?”
Then I both heard and felt the thunder of its landing. Rocks trembled around my feet. A plume of dust rose from the Wurm’s landing place. Multiple jagged bolts of lightning struck from the ground into the sky above. I shook my head. Craziness!
A moment later I had the bones straightened and fused together correctly. At least I had the power! And if that meant modifying myself? I flexed my back thoughtfully, hoping that my new strength would prove useful, even if it had been an act of selfish extremity.
What was that sound? Strange … my eyes snapped up to the cliff-face a second time. For a long moment, I did not understand what I was seeing. Then I began to laugh–but my laughter had a slightly hysterical edge.
“Truly told, did P’dáronï not write, ‘No longer to plough the desert as before’? Today, El Shashi will plough the desert with his Wurm!”
I whirled upon my heel. Drawing a breath into my lungs so deep it hurt, I screamed, “Come! I defy you!” My voice echoed out across the wasteland like the call of the great hunting eagles of Mara-Kern, where I myself had once flown off the edge of a cliff. “They call me the Scourge of the Westland. I am the Plague-Rider! I am the Running Man!”
I would infect this barren place with my madness.
And I fled southward.
For behind me, rushing through a Wurm-sized tunnel in the hills and thundering down into the once-dry salt pan as if a gargantuan spigot had been opened, came gushing the unmistakably khaki floodwaters of the Nugar River. How the Wurm had cut the river’s new course beneath the hills, I knew not. The noise and spray of the waterfall was immense. Rainbows danced at its edges. Intermingled mist and dust began to cloud the air. Ay, an area as vast as this would take seasons to fill. Perhaps it was even a lake-bed, myriad anna ago. Now it would be renewed.
Laughing, I pressed forward upon feet that felt as light as chaff blown aside during the tossing of the harvest. A fey spirit occupied my quoph that day. I spread my arms wide to embrace the wind. I called again and again to the Wurm to plough the desert pan with me. I ran with my eyes closed, revelling in the sensation of my feet pounding the hard-packed surface, the rasping of breath in my lungs, the fires of life spreading through my veins, the vast potential of the curse Jyla had laid upon my destiny–and for once, I was glad of it all. Here, my existence was narrowed to a simple imperative. Run or die.
I chose not to die.
When in the late afternoon my legs began to cramp uncontrollably, and my every breath burned as though my lungs were afire, the pain brought me back to my senses. I considered my condition. I healed myself repeatedly, but the cramps kept returning at shorter and shorter intervals. I was forced to rest. I gobbled up the last of the cheese. Then I was rudely awakened by cold water lapping at my ankles. Had I fallen asleep? I realised I must have circled back to the north unknowingly. I had been running all day without a single thought as to my course or destination.
The whole area was becoming a lake. I sloshed ankle-deep in a muddy new lake, and splashed the water with my hands like a child. I broke into a high-stepping sprint, sending water and mud shooting in all directions. I stumbled across a number of fresh-water salmon, which must have been sucked all the way through from the Nugar, thrashing about in the shallows, and scooped one up with my bare hands and sank my teeth into its flesh while it yet squirmed.
When my belly’s shouting had been stilled, I began to trot southward at a gentler pace, trying to keep the nausea resulting from all that raw fish from brewing into an explosion. Toward eventide I crossed the boundary between wet and dry land, and paused to observe how the lake was yet growing, dyndigit by dyndigit. Gorgeous, uninhibited life.
I drank deep of that life.
I felt so ridiculously proud of my handiwork, I could barely stand my own company.
Two days and nights further did I run, flanked always by the low lines of hills that demarcated this enormous salt pan. It was by now the fifth day since the Wurm’s rising, and my food and water had long since run out. Though I cast about by the makh for fresh water, not a trace could I find. Despite my powers, dehydration was making the cramps impossible to manage. I no longer perspired. My lungs felt as though they were twin desiccated prunes, horribly shrivelled from the inside. My lips were cracked to the point of bleeding and a carpenter’s rasp slid along my throat with every breath. I was sore tempted to turn back to the north–but for fear of the Wurm, kept my nose pointed ever southward.
The monotony of running burned itself into my limb-memory. My legs moved without need for conscious thought, and the dull drumbeat of my feet lulled me into a semi-slumber that I drifted into and out of, my mind utterly disassociated from the doings of my flesh. This was dangerous. I knew it, bone-deep, but could not force myself to give my body’s signals any regard. Days and nights of constant pain, the continual pounding of overstressed joints and ligaments, the nerve-endings shooting dull pain at my brain–I ignored it all.
And I could feel the Wurm. Sense it. Measuring my progress. Following with the inflexible patience of a mighty hunter.
That night I awoke suddenly, measured by the stars during the sixth makh of darkness, when I tripped over the bleached bones of some nameless animal. I was so worn out that I lay prone without the strength or the will to rise. I must have fallen asleep on my feet. But then I detected a tell-tale trembling in the ground, rapidly escalating.
I slowed down! My thought became a shout as I felt the ground beneath me buckle. Now I die!
The Wurm surged forth from the depths not half a dozen paces from my right hand, and the force of its rupture knocked me sprawling. Earth and stone sloughed off its segments and rained about my prone form. As it rose it gave vent to a shriek that began in a long, high-pitched hiss and rapidly built into a full-blown bellow that thundered across the flats. I clapped my hands over my ears. It was slowing. Turning. Four houses tall, looming over my head as if it were the greatest tree in existence, the Wurm’s feelers tasted the cool night air.
I had seldom been so close to the creature. So close I could smell it, that characteristic burnt-umber smell; so near, I could feel upon my face the heat radiating from its great body, and count the striations on its carapace etched by the constant friction against sand and stone. Mata’s truth, I had no desire to be so endangered! But perhaps that very closeness was my friend, for the beast could not scent its prey. The Wurm’s roar split the night again. It echoed back from the distant hills, roll upon roll of thunder, as though the power of the creature were rolled up in the power of nature all around me.
I pushed to my feet, hesitating. If I ran the beast would surely attack. If I stayed my life might also become forfeit. My stomach churned. The magnitude of the creature staggered me. I sensed the titanic wash of its magic, and suddenly a vision crystallised in my mind:
Janos. Holding a key. Or is he? He is smiling.
He says, ‘Solûm tï mik, when the time is right, merge yourself into the gyael-irfa. There you will find the answers you are seeking. You are the vessel of hope. You must find my true name and speak it!’
I say, ‘But how will I know your true name, Janos?’
He
replies, ‘When you sojourn with the holy men, the answer will come to you.’
I am no holy person, truly told. Some would name me Ulim’s henchman. As the vision flickered out of existence, I was left to reflect that this was the second time in a season I had been told to seek Mata’s face. Perhaps that was the way? Deep in my thoughts, I stumbled backward over a stone.
Clink.
With a roar that rattled me from the bootlaces up, the Wurm swooped. But I was too close. Its huge body could not bend in the way it demanded of itself.
Stung into action, I peeled away to the south, letting my legs swing fast and free, fairly shooting away across the ground. I expected, glancing back over my shoulder, to see a storm bearing down upon me, but all I felt was the tell-tale trembling of the ground as the creature dived earthward once more with that ungodly, unbelievable ease; as at home swimming the earth as any fish swimming the Nugar’s waters. Lightning crackled in great hoops from Wurm to earth, and upside-down, multi-branched trees of dazzling light blasted upward. I smelled a sharp tang in the air.
The adrenalin pushed me hard. Within the makh I was starting to draw on my reserves, to dull down the twinging, to sweep the toxins away from my muscles so that they could continue contracting and thrusting unabated. But I was well into my rhythm, running smoothly and fast, with the absolute minimum output of energy I could manage. I was thankful I had become so lean and muscular, for without that, I would have been hauling about much more weight on this flight. Even so, if I did not find food and water soon I would collapse, never to rise again …
With a start, I realised I was not alone.