The Legend of El Shashi

by Marc Secchia

  I shared this grephe with Sherik.

  “Tell me of this letter,” he said. And after I had shared the details, “I would do the same had I a daughter. But let us be on our guard, and pray.”

  Thereafter, the usually taciturn Brother waxed lyrical in prayer every daimi and dioni orison. It exposed hitherto unsuspected depths to his quatl and quoph–and I had known him for eleven anna, ever since his elevation to the Solburn Brotherhood. His faith had muscle. It was wholly unlike the intellectual, and often mystical, brand of religion I had once so despised and misdiagnosed in Janos. As we trod the byways of Hakooi we found ourselves speaking more and more openly, as man to man, about what lay in our hearts. Never with another man had I experienced this dear a camaraderie. I could be vulnerable with him and it did not matter. He neither judged nor condemned, and he gave much in return.

  One day he said, “I have been considering the phrase ‘Solûm tï mik’.”

  “For three days since last we spoke?”

  “Ay, has it been?” he grunted. “Indeed, I own you read into it both too much and too little. Have you never gone to Janos’ home and searched its hearth?”

  “No …”

  A javelin to the heart! Cast well and true! Suddenly, excitement welled up within me and I could not repress a little caper that made a broad smile break across Sherik’s face. “Too obvious, Brother?”

  “Too obvious by far!”

  Have you ever had a kind of knowing that lives deep in your very marrow, on a particular matter? A truth that rings within the quoph as a bell heard ringing from afar upon a clear day?

  But first, I had a grim duty to perform. And so, with a heaviness in our hearts, we entered Darbis in Hakooi that eventide.

  Darbis as I remember it was a dirty harbour town sulking on the banks of the Tug River, a major tributary of the Nugar. Slapped-up wooden houses wrestled for space with animal-pens, sewage ran down the middle of the roads, and there was a constant din of river traffic, commerce, and gambling dens. Within our first makh in town, we twice saw men being robbed out in the open by gangs of ruffians. The second time the watch descended in all their wrath and a stand-up swordfight developed–which attracted no particular attention from the populace.

  We picked a likely-looking alehouse and began our inquiries.

  By noontide following we picked up a trail. It led us to the dock area. Lenbis owned a hulking, battered warehouse complex covering three-quarters of a block, and a walled compound hard alongside it that appeared built to repel an army, with seamless walls three stories tall and guard-lookouts on each corner. Travelling minstrel he was not. Sherik thrust out his jaw and popped his knuckles one by one.

  “Ay,” I muttered.

  “Let us await the tide of darkness.”

  This deep in the Glooming eventide came early, and with it, a bitter rain began to weep from the low, dark clouds. But Brothers are inured to the elements. Our cells were unheated, footwear was shunned, and we worked in all weathers. Sherik and I put our hoods up and crept back to the docks, making no more sound than the approaching storm.

  Even the blustering wind, however, could not mask the sounds of revelry within. After skulking about for half a span, we found a side door with but one guard standing idly beside it, probably wishing he could join the party. From time to time he took a puff of his long dream-pipe, and the sallow smoke he exhaled periodically suggested nardis to me–prolonged use would leave this man psychotic. Sherik melted into the night.

  A few breaths later and a massive shadow enveloped the guard. I trotted forward and we pressed the door ajar.

  A short corridor led to a second door, this one brass-reinforced and locked from the inside. After a short whispered consultation, Sherik fetched his unconscious victim, slung him over one shoulder, and we knocked politely at the door.

  “Use the password, you idiot!”

  “I’m Brother Tardik from the Guild of Athocaries!” I lied, cheerfully. “We’re on a mission of mercy! We found your man collapsed outside.”

  A string of curses greeted this news. But a short span later the door opened a crack and two pairs of suspicious eyes evaluated our habits, our shaven heads and bare feet, and the pale, unresponsive face of Sherik’s victim. Thereafter came a rattling of bolts and the groan of unwilling hinges. The two guards motioned us inside. Sherik’s long arms shot out and smashed their heads together.

  I dropped to one knee. “You cracked this one’s skull.”

  “Thin bones,” grunted Sherik, sounding entirely unapologetic. “Heal him, but don’t wake him.”

  “No danger of that.” I touched the man nevertheless.

  Ahead of us, the interior courtyard was a gloomy wilderness bathed in isolated pools of light of by argan-oil lanterns, some of which had been allowed to gutter. It must have been a pretty garden once, but the climbing violet-brindels and pungent old-man’s saffron had been allowed to grow wild, before being hacked back in a fit of haphazard gusto and no apparent skill. Crates and boxes were stacked high in all corners, as was the filth and rubbish around them. All this suited us well. We stole through the deeper shadows toward the sounds of music and laughter, and soon found ourselves alongside a set of rooms rudely boarded together where the servant quarters must have collapsed in the past, judging from the debris. I smelled salikweed and several other narcotics besides.

  I pressed my eye to a chink in the wall. The first room was empty. The second contained several scrawny and illused women and children, but no-one I recognised. In the third room, a group of eight men played cards, while two musicians sawed away manfully at their lummericoots in the corner and a third banged unenthusiastically upon a set of triple-drums. I beckoned Sherik.

  “Third from right,” I breathed in his ear.

  The man matching Lenbis’ description was handsome in a fleshy, over-indulged way, and his rumik, though of an expensive cut, was stained and worn at the edges as though to mark he had once been rich but now was fallen on lean times. A dream-pipe dangled from the corner of his mouth, and as we watched he took a large swig from the bottle in front of him and laid his cards on the table with a flourish.

  “Four on the rack!” he shouted. “Anyone beat that?”

  With groans and curses, the others tossed in their cards and Lenbis cupped his hand over a small mound of coins.

  “Hajik Hounds, boss, you won at last!”

  “Got to give you miserable thieves some practice at Serka,” said Lenbis.

  “Another round?”

  “Na.” He cursed fluidly and heaved himself up from the chair, coiling a heavy leather jatha-whip between his hands as he rose. “Got that wench next door. If she doesn’t do her work this time I swear I’ll leave such a pattern on her flesh … like this! Gah!”

  Lenbis cracked the whip across the table, sending cards flying. The men flinched.

  Sherik tugged my arm. “Here. Look.”

  As one man we bent to a cracked panel peered in to the next room.

  That scene I will never forget. Along the wall nearest us stood a heavy metal-frame bed. In the dingy lamplight we saw a woman lying thereon, curled into a foetal position. The bedclothes were filthy, liberally smeared with excrement, vomit, and blood. Her rags were torn in a dozen places. Beside her lay an infant of less than a season’s age, exhausted beyond squalling, soiled and bruised, mewling like a kitten as it weakly sought its mother’s breast. A girl of perhaps three or four anna sat on the bed’s end, very still, and her hair was matted and filthy. She watched the door with the wariness of a hurt animal. Everything about her bearing suggested fear and misery.

  Lenbis kicked open the door and staggered inside. The girl gave a tiny shriek and dived beneath the bed. “Get up!” he roared, struggling to unbutton his trousers. “Get up, you stupid, lazy … narkik!”

  Stirring, the woman moaned. We heard a clink. I saw she wore a thick metal collar. It was chained to the bed-frame.

  The whip whistled through the air and snapped acros
s the small of her back. An invisible hand plucked the cloth. From that spot, a red stain welled up instantly. Her mouth opened, but the sound she made was more a gargle than a scream, an animalistic noise. I had never heard a person make such a sound, and looked at my companion. Sherik concentrated on the scene. Sword in hand, he had the point up near his eye. As it caught the lamplight it glinted evilly at me. I had once sworn never to use a sword again. But now I deliberately drew mine too.

  Lenbis bent over the lamp. Turned it up. Then he stumped over to the bed and jerked off the bedclothes. He hoisted the infant by one leg and tossed it casually onto the floor.

  “Whelp of a goat!” he snarled.

  Again Lailla opened her mouth, and now, in the brighter light, I saw what I had missed before. She had no tongue. The bastard must have cut it out.

  Beside my ear, Sherik growled a phrase he had definitely not learned living amongst monks.

  Lenbis was up on the bed now, close to our hiding place. Suddenly metal screeched against wood, right by my cheek, and I jerked my head back in shock. Within there came a squeal of pain, identical to the squeal a porker makes when branded by a farmer. I saw Sherik’s sword buried hilt-deep in the wood panelling.

  He yanked it out, now red-tipped. “Come!”

  We ran. Lenbis’ bellows had stopped the music. We burst into the card-room and startled the men there with their swords half-drawn. Sherik was a man possessed. He laid into them mercilessly, his fearsome sword-strokes splattering gore across the walls. Some monk! I was swept along in his wake, killing a would-be backstabber, charging one of the musicians and breaking his own lummericoot across his throat. They were intoxicated to a man, befuddled with drugs and drink, and stood little chance against us.

  In a moment we barged into the next room, bloodied and panting, and faced off against Lenbis, naked from the waist down and clutching a small dagger. He must have read his fate in our grim scowls, in our raised swords and blood-splattered habits.

  “Who … who are you?” he quavered.

  “Lailla’s father.”

  Lenbis groaned. His bowels opened involuntarily, spraying down his legs. I was just about to cry out in disgust, when with startling speed Lenbis turned the dagger to his own throat and slashed it–badly, but mortally.

  Sherik thrust me forward. “Don’t let him die! He deserves town justice.”

  Ay, town justice indeed. Public display, a trial … death was too good for this man. I could not have imagined how massively this would impact me–Lailla, my gentle, kind little girl, tortured for anna at the hands of this monster. Jerom’s words popped back into my head, ‘She thought he loved her’ and ‘when you weren’t around to save her’. Hatred. He cut out her tongue! Shame. I let this happen! And now I was planning to heal him?

  At the very instant my hands touched Lenbis, another idea insinuated itself into my mind. Let him live, and he might do this again to another woman. I knew exactly the fate he deserved. Quicker than rational thought, I exacted a crooked retribution.

  Thunder rolled violently in the distance–but hardly enough to cause the dust showering from the ceiling and the groaning of wooden walls. Sherik’s eyes widened.

  “Oh, for Mata’s sake!” I shouted, shaking my fists at the ceiling. “Can you not leave a man be? I will take it back!”

  Sherik shook my shoulder. “What have you done?”

  “The Wurm rises! Get Lailla!”

  I scooped up the infant. Grandson number … quick, be strong! Over-hastily, I poured life into him. He, at least, would not die.

  Sherik hacked at Lailla’s chain like a woodcutter possessed of an evil spirit. He broke the sword, but the chain broke too. He slung her over his shoulder, disregarding her struggles. Lailla howled that terrible animal-noise, again and again.

  BAROOOM! The thunder returned, very close this time. The entire building leaped on its foundations. I was aware of a presence that momentarily brushed against my consciousness. The Wurm had missed its mark. It was somewhere up in that warehouse. Dear sweet Mata, was the thunder … the Wurm? Was it bringing a storm?

  I whirled; shoved the baby into Sherik’s arms. “Get them out of here!”

  “What are you–”

  “The girl!”

  “East road! Meet you!” he shouted back.

  I pounded into the room again. Flung my sword into a corner. I dove onto my hands and knees beside the bed and seized the little girl by anything I could reach–legs, arms, hair, I cared nought. She came out screaming and biting. “I’m sorry!” I shouted, trying to gather her into my arms. “I’m your grandfather–” she nipped a chunk out of my right bicep, “–you wretched little salcat!”

  “Mummy!”

  My ear narrowly missed being trimmed as well. I scrambled backwards, fighting to get to my feet, to the door, because any moment now there was going to be a–

  BAROOOM! The wall buckled and splintered, torn apart down the middle. Huge burgundy mandibles ripped it apart as an aged scrolleaf crumbles beneath a careless touch. The Wurm was in no hurry. It paused, giving me a moment to realise that I was seeing less than the lower half of its jaw. The rest of the beast was somewhere above the level of the ceiling. Its mandibles were each the thickness of my torso and their business ends were serrated like Faloxxian daggers, making terrifyingly light work of the building as it devoured three-quarters of the room before my disbelieving eyes.

  A second time I felt that majestic sense of presence; the certainty that this was a being rather than an automaton, a being that lived and moved and breathed as I. No, not as I–for this was an enchanted creature, birthed and steeped in magic, perhaps the greatest storehouse of magic the world had ever known. I reeled at an assault upon my mind too, truly told, similar to the Eldrik gyael-irfa but a thousand times more immediate and potent. Daggers of lightning flashed behind my eyes. The thunder rolled again, ocean billows buffeting the defences of my mind, then receding again. Was it Janos’ work which had prepared me for this? My mental fortress, that even collective might of the Eldrik Inquisitors had been unable to breach?

  The little girl clung to my neck for dear life now, too terrified to fight. Good, I thought. I would lose less flesh this way.

  We watched as the Wurm surged forward and to our left, past us, cutting off our escape.

  Drawing breath, I smelled smoke, burning … argan oil? Between the Wurm’s body and the wall a gap had opened as it rolled aside. Through that gap a dark wave surged forward, dousing us from head to toe in the aromatic oil. Lenbis must have been storing vast quantities in the warehouse, I thought. This night’s work would be his ruin.

  I heaved my granddaughter out of the lapping oil. I wiped her face clear.

  Then I saw a flicker of flame dancing toward us across the oil’s dark surface.

  Back was no option. Contrary to the screaming in my head I surged into the gap, slipping with the guile of a sea-otter into the warehouse.

  Right into the conflagration.

  Sweet oil sucked at my knees as I struggled with all my might along the length of the great Wurm–ring after ring, the monstrous length of it still partly buried in the ground beneath the warehouse. I remembered Sathak riding the beast. I wished I could be him. Just for a span. But there was no way we could have scaled its segments, thrice my height and more.

  As I had feared, the fire leaped eagerly upon our oily bodies, and began to feed with greedy abandon. Hotter. Hotter. I burned. The girl shrieked in terror and pain. Inwardly, I stepped into a rippling pool of peace in my quoph. I reached into the depths of my potency and immersed us in peace, stilling the burning, preserving our skins, not fighting the fire, but merely matching it breath for breath.

  I soothed my granddaughter with my touch and my voice. “You won’t burn. You’re safe now. Your mother’s safe. Mata will keep us, you’ll see.”

  I suppose we resembled human torches as we broke free of the warehouse. The streets beyond were jammed with the curious and the feckless. Hundreds of them
must have seen us, I own, bathed in fire, streaking brightly through the streets of Darbis that night.

  And so was born the legend.

  It was Darbis which named me the Burning One.

  Chapter 28: Jyla Commands the Wurm

  No man may equal the Gods. Yet should one be elevated, of what mettle should he prove? Therefore take heed which cup aids your sup. Drink well and deep, friend, of life’s bittersweet chalice–drink while you may!

  Soihon al’Thab kin Tar’ka, When Gods Walked: Untold Tales of El Shashi

  “We must hurry,” I told Sherik, depositing Lyllia at his feet.

  Sherik stared frankly at our nakedness, before yanking off his habit and swaddling the girl in it. He had found blanket for the infant. Or stolen it, more likely. A monk most practical! “What happened?”

  “We burned in argan oil. Find her clothes, will you, and–”

  The big man nodded. “I will care for them as my own. I promise.”

  “Near the Lyrn Mountains on the Roymere side is a village called Imbi. Ask there after Rubiny and Tarrak. Can you carry all three?”

  “Ay, as Mata gives me strength. I will find shelter and clothes first.” Sherik pressed a coin into my hand. “So you don’t need to steal clothes or food.”

  I stared down at the Lortiti Real in my palm. Solid gold. Heavy. As solid as the day Jyla paid me for Janos’ betrayal.

  Sherik, mistaking my silence, said curtly, “I swore to guard you. But I cannot run from the Wurm as you can. And surely not with these to care for … where will you go?”

  “Roymere. Janos’ home.”

  “Ay, a good mark. Beware the mountains. With snow, they’ll be impassable.”