The Legend of El Shashi

by Marc Secchia

  We travelled at a jatha’s walking-pace, which is gentle. We tarried to pass an eventide with a wandering ulule who had taken upon herself the entertainment of a group of road-workers, those hardy men charged with keeping the undergrowth from invading the road–no mean task. Much did they suffer from the flesh-shrivelling bite of the leaf-adder, and the sting of threshing-nettles, apart from general exposure to cold and suns. Unobtrusively, I plied my trade among them. My father looked on with alert interest.

  Like me, in his youth, Orik Sorlakson had been an ardent pursuer of the daughters of Yuthe. “A lady in every port, my boy!” he boasted. “A Sea-Captain is expected to conform to certain standards of behaviour!” I snidely wondered how many other half-brothers and half-sisters I might have scattered around the coastline of the Fiefdoms. “Are you still sore at my not intervening when you made the Matabond with Rubiny?” he asked gently.

  I nearly gagged, I felt so awful at raising this note of guilt within him. “Nay. That is but a small note of regret amongst anna of happy memories with her,” I replied.

  The second morning, he sat alongside me on the carter’s bench and took up the master-prod as though intent upon examining the tool for deficiencies.

  “You asked about Aulynni,” he said, as though his words were being dragged forth by the red-hot tongs of a torturer. “In those days, Eldoran was in at peace, though in great fear. Talan, the son of Lucan, was First Councillor of the Sorcerers. He gathered in the reins of his power, consolidating his hold upon the factions, dealing and diving and rolling ukals and favours across every palm open to him. Always secretly afraid, that man. Insecure.” He spat over the edge of the cart. “Little did we know the scope of his ambitions.”

  “I think the anna must have been 1325. Perhaps an anna or two earlier, I don’t rightly remember. I was a very young man for a Sea-Captain, Arlak. I looked older, I acted older, and I came into my position by the money and favour of my father. Ay, I was talented, and brave in that way of young men who think that Belion and Suthauk will rise and fall at their bidding. I was worse than a strutting lyom.”

  “I met Aulynni one eventide in the marketplace of Eldoran. We were trading a special extract of sathic seed–oil of Rumali, it is called. The Eldrik were buying it up by the shipload, for what, we never learned, but if a Captain knew the ways of the Gulf of Erbon and the Straits of Nxthu, he could make his fortune and more. You would not believe it. Men used to scheme and kill each other to crew my ships. More oft than not, we’d leave port amidst a boiling fistfight upon the pier. Those were heady days, boy. Days you could smell the terls and ukals upon the sea breezes.”

  Orik’s laughter had a knowing edge. “Bet you could start such a fight if townspeople knew El Shashi had come to heal their afflictions.”

  “Ay.” So I should swallow this joke? To him, my mantle must seem burdensome. “Carry on, father.”

  He must have sensed my discomfort, for his voice grew gentler. “I hate to say it, Arlak, but Aulynni was a brief dalliance that meant little to me. That day in the marketplace she had a vulnerability about her that was as perfume to my quoph. I had no idea I had fathered a child by her. The Eldrik are supposed to have ways of ensuring such things do not happen. If I were ever to meet this Amal … ah, Mata! My sin against her is grievous, Arlak. Aulynni I saw–I don’t rightly remember. Perhaps a handful of times. I went home to find myself betrothed in a loveless match. I returned to Eldoran for my final voyage and met your mother there. I fell in love with Alannah and forgot all about Aulynni.”

  He shifted upon the bench, holding that master-prod as though his life depended upon it. “I tried to be a good father, Arlak! To Rubiny … and to you. I gave you a place, parents to call your own! How was I supposed to know? Mata’s fate! Is this how She cares for us? It is too hard. How can I bear it?”

  I put my arm around his frail shoulders. I clutched my father to my chest as though I were the strong one.

  After a long time during which there was no sound in the forest save the huffing of our jatha, he murmured, “I’d want her to know that I loved her–I mean, I would have loved her, as surely as Doublesun follows Springtide. Do you know what I mean?”

  I murmured that I did.

  After that, my father slumbered several makh.

  More northerly in the forest, we came upon places where the Wurm had passed through. Orik surveyed the devastation with a grim mien. “How big is the Wurm now, say you, Arlak? Jump down and pace out the width of its trail here.”

  “Fifty-seven paces, father.”

  The weather closed in upon us. Orik took to sheltering within the cart, but his voice regaled me for makh upon makh with the skill of an ulule in full flow.

  When we came to the Ry-Breen Crossing, I saw to my pleasure that the ferryman’s house and livelihood had been spared. The great rope spanning the river was intact, the ferryman was bringing a customer in our direction, and there were but two signs of the Wurm’s passing: a huge trail of flattened trees north of the ford, and a hole to the south that had swallowed the road and much besides. I directed our cart with care, thinking: how could any creature have bitten such a hole in the earth? I should know better than any man. Yet still, a stubborn spirit of disbelief inhabited my quoph.

  While we waited for the ferryman, we talked of the anna that had passed since my time in Eldoran. How would Eliyan be faring? What had become of Jyla and her plotting since she attempted to break the Banishment? And what was her motivation? Orik, even more than I, mistrusted the worthiness of her motives. “A means to usurp power,” he said. “Perhaps by removing the Banishment, she could accomplish the overthrow of Talan and his faction? Or harness the might of these Karak? Or turn the magical might of the Banishment spell to her advantage?”

  We could but speculate, in our lack of knowledge.

  The ferryman did not appear to recognise me. But I frowned inwardly as Orik chatted to him about where we were bound. He was so excited! Rightly so. But I had been too many anna steeped in keeping my ways secret, I thought. Obviously, Jyla was no longer concerned about chasing me about the Fiefdoms. If she could command the Wurm’s storehouse of magic from afar, what need to travel the lands? What need even to know my location?

  So we crossed the Ry-Breen without wetting so much as the sole of a boot or a jatha’s hoof, and turned those huge, spreading horns of the jatha to the western horizon.

  Hunched deep in a thick burnoose gifted me by Telmak Lodge, proof against the gathering cold, I did ponder long and deep upon the changes in my life that stretch of road we had just covered, had wrought. Once, for the Faloxx to murder my parents. Twice, for the trader’s grephe and my folly at Elaki Fountain. Thrice, for my journey back home. And, by undertaking this last journey, to grant my father his dying wish.

  What was Mata trying to teach me in all this?

  “Father Yatak!” I burshingled most deeply in the doorway of his simple chamber. “I heard you were unwell?”

  How strange to stand once more within Solburn Monastery.

  The good Father coughed so violently I imagined his lungs were trying to turn themselves inside-out. I knew it at once for the river-fever, or the drowning-fever, named for the excessive congestion upon the lungs that every Darkenseason steals many lives, old and young alike. Last I knew, the Brothers had been testing various herbal infusions and extracts for their potency against this fever.

  “Do not stand upon ceremony, Brother Benok,” he whispered.

  “You have suffered enough, Father,” said I, stepping hastily across the chamber to his pallet–the simple pallet offered all Brothers in their cells, in place of the usual Umarite cot.

  “I suffer little.”

  “With respect, Father …”

  “I suppose I couldn’t stop you making of every day a miracle,” he grumbled, rising from his bed. “How you do that … thank you. Listen, don’t fuss over me. There are some thirty penitents awaiting the Holyhand. All have needs greater than I.” The Father smooth
ed his cassock and peered past me. “By the aspect of this man, I gather I have the privilege of addressing your father?”

  I introduced the two old men to each other–truly told, one much older than the other–and then made my excuses to retreat to my old chamber. There I dyed my right hand with blue fabric dye as ever before, and after letting it dry, slipped through the secret tunnel into the Holyhand’s chamber. I tugged a sea-blue, hooded monk’s habit over my head. To my face I affixed a stagesmith’s mask. A bell chimed. Rising, I processed between two brothers to the outer court of the monastery, entering my screened booth from behind by a private entrance.

  Engrossed in my work, I whiled away four makh.

  Not every ill may be healed at a touch. Maladies there are that require a great deal of careful thought and work, and planning too. Three of the penitents, I examined, strengthened, and dismissed with instructions to return the next day. The rest I dealt with, and afterward, could barely raise the strength to walk back to my quarters.

  The following day I roused myself before the makh of dawn and toured the hospital and athocarial teaching chambers with five of the senior Solburn Brothers. Thereafter I consulted with them at length, learning much that pleased me and much that required my attention. I retrieved the two books P’dáronï had gifted me. The book of Eldrik medicine I would leave with Father Yatak to be copied, pored over, dissected, and treasured. P’dáronï’s book I would take with me. I had already copied onto scrolls those parts of her writings which dealt with subjects that would help the Solburn Brothers develop their craft and practice.

  I returned to find Orik Sorlakson discussing business plans with the Father.

  “A hospital in every Fiefdom!” breathed Father Yatak, his eyes shining with a peculiar light that set my spine a-quiver.

  Orik looked as smug as a salcat neck-deep in cream and lapping it up for all he was worth. “In every Fiefdom,” he agreed. “I could not think of a worthier cause–”

  “Father! What are you talking about?”

  “Putting the resources of the House Telmak to good use.”

  I stared, and then shook my head. “Father, you don’t run a palace, you run an inn. A very good inn, I’ll concede–”

  “Jatha-droppings to that, son!” my father interrupted hotly. “You have no earthly conception of Telmak House’s wealth, so I suggest you keep that flapping hole of yours shut lest your ignorance evermore be brayed to the world!”

  Should I be shocked by his fury? Ay, but what shocked me most, was to see a mirror of my own behaviour and temperament in swingeing action.

  “Ha!” he snorted, probably mistaking my silence for chagrin. “As I thought. Son, I was a rich man before I ever met your mother. I had the good fortune to be well advised in my investments, both in the Fiefdoms and abroad. Let me advise you that I can think of few better causes to spend my terls and ukals upon than this venture; for I mark, Arlak, that through this great work of teaching, you have done more good in our Fiefdoms in a handful of anna than you ever did during the gantuls your travels. Father Yatak has convinced me. You are saving lives every day. Through our good Solburn Brothers, you are changing the very fabric of Umarite society.”

  I burshingled deeply to him, humbled. “Father, your vision is greater than mine.”

  “And more steaming clods jatha-droppings heaped upon that!”

  “You’re in a testy mood, Master Telmak,” said the Father. “More chai?”

  My father unbent with a wry smile. “Ay, Father, and scrolls, ink, and many hands to carry forth my messages. I will pen the missives in my own hand. I have few days left in which to set much in motion. From you, I shall require a list of your Solburn and affiliated monasteries throughout the Fiefdoms. I will match these with my business contacts.”

  I could see the thoughts buzzing around in his brain. After a long, thoughtful silence, I commented, “You do me honour, father.”

  In his grin I saw myself. “In all you told me upon the road, son, you never hinted at this great work. Nay, truly told, the honour in this is mine. I’ve too long sat upon piles of terls and ukals with nought of worth to show for it. Now incline your ear to this. I’ve been thinking. When I mentioned investments abroad, I meant Eldoran. Son, I have prepared the sealed, witnessed papers to leave those interests to you.”

  “I … uh …”

  “Don’t thank me until you learn what I bequeath you,” he said, raising a warning finger. He changed the gesture suddenly to the buskal of Mata’s mercy. “Early on, following the advice of those I felt understood the Eldrik well, I invested very heavily in the Armittalese slave trade.”

  My eyes popped like a land-snail’s eyes upon their waving stalks.

  “Well may you gasp, son. According to the last message I had smuggled out of Eldoran–for you must know, there’s an illegal trade operating between Eldoran and the shores of the Fiefdoms to this very day–our family owns some seventy-three percent of the slave trade. There’s a very good chance, as the heir to this venture of the House Telmak, that you own the woman you told me about, this P’dáronï of Armittal.”

  “But … I’m illegitimate!”

  He tapped his nose knowingly. “Not according to the papers I have prepared.”

  “Father, the Sorcerers will kill me when they find out my mother was an Eldrik Warlock!”

  “The papers note you are the son of the Master Telmak by his mistress Alannah. Not Alannah of Eldoran. There is no lie cast in these runes.”

  Now I knew what it was to be outmanoeuvred and cornered, a rat beneath a salcat’s paw. Orik Sorlakson amazed me. However, I still had strength to grumble, “But I don’t want to own any slaves! My very quoph rebels at the thought!”

  “What would you do?” my father challenged me.

  “Free them all,” I snapped. “Every last one.”

  “And thereby terminate the only route the Armittalese have to escape their Nummandori Overlords?”

  “Oh, and life in Eldoran is so much better?”

  He nodded quietly. “Well might you be bitter upon this score, Arlak. Several tales for the road, say I, to share what few things I know of the lot of the Armittalese. And two words of advice. One, you already know. You would not win this woman’s heart by purchasing her freedom. But you could gift her that freedom and then see if she still chooses you. That is a risk you must take. Secondly, I charge you to find a better solution than the one you propose. It sounds like you already have an incentive.”

  “Who exactly are you calling an ‘incentive’, you pompous old–”

  “Mata’s peace, both of you!” Father Yatak moved between us with his hands raised. “I’m convinced. Truly and unreservedly … convinced.”

  From either side of him, we growled in tandem, “Of what?”

  His expression clearly said, ‘See?’

  I gazed at my father. He gazed back at me. After a moment, we shared a chuckle.

  “Father and son,” said Orik. “Truly told.”

  “Father and son,” Father Yatak agreed. “Convinced.”

  Chapter 32: Jyla’s Crucible

  Cracking open my eyes, I beheld before me nought but the white of death. Endless white fields of death.

  Lorimi the Historian: Nethe Unbound, The Essential El Shashi (113th Scrolleaf)

  The time before the fires of Nethe descended upon my life was one of the happiest that I remember, magnified through the eyes of my father’s contentment.

  Ordinarily, Alldark week is a time of fear and trembling and paying one’s dues to ward off the ghouls of Ulim’s Hunt. For our family, Alldark was a time of laughter, rediscovery, and the telling of many stories upon the great-grandfather’s knee. Truly told, he could have done with ten knees for all of the demands his family made upon him–but Orik Sorlakson lapped it up as an old hound who at last has found his place beside a warm fireplace, and a family to cosset him, rub his ears, and never trouble his grey old muzzle with a cross word.

  For this, I could gladly c
ross the breadth of the Fiefdoms, a thousand times and more.

  As I suspected, Sherik and Lailla appeared after Alldark Week, having rested west of the mountains in mild Hakooi and more lately, at the Solburn Monastery.

  “I’m a monk no longer,” boomed Sherik, clasping me in his great arms. “And with your permission, I will have your daughter to the Matabond.”

  “Lailla is a woman grown,” I protested, trying to peer around his huge shoulder to see her response. “Knows she her own mind? And what of the children? Lyllia? Tyrak?”

  “I will care for them. Think you not I–”

  “Grandfather!” A dark pair of eyes peered up at me from the region of my knee, which had been claimed and kept by both her legs and arms. “You came back!”

  “Did I not promise?”

  She nodded solemnly. “Men don’t keep promises.”

  Sherik saved me by kneeling swiftly and gathering the little mite in his arms. In a moment, a strangely deep pair of dark eyes gazed over her thumb, inserted firmly into her mouth, at me–an examination searching enough to make me squirm. “Look at this man,” he said, gently. “He promised to come back, and he did. He promised to heal your mother, and he will.”

  I started to say, “Healing what is no longer present is complex–”

  “You can heal my mama,” said the child, around her thumb. “The power’s hidden in your quoph. All you need do is summon it, grandfather.”

  Ulim’s howling hunt! I stared at the child as a deadly realisation struck me dumb. I was part-Eldrik, descended from a line of powerful Sorcerers and Warlocks. Should I be surprised that magic should rear its head in my bloodline?

  “I promised,” I agreed, trying to iron the quiver out of my voice. A four anna-old could do this to me? “I will start work right away, Lyllia. After all, if your mother is to speak the vows of the Matabond, she’ll need a new tongue, won’t she?”