by Marc Secchia
I am afraid my eyes almost popped out of my head. In Mata’s name, at my anna of life I could still be made to blush like a shy young buck?
“I, er …” I coughed indelicately. “Very well, P’dáronï-nevsêsh.” In my most lecherous manner, I leaned over her until my lips brushed her earlobe and panted, “It will be my immense and prolonged pleasure to instruct a slave of Armittal in every last detail of these matters carnal.”
She laughed with such glee it made my colour deepen. “I hope so!” Placing her arms around my neck, she added, “Starting right now, you incorrigible rogue.”
Ay, these were strange days indeed. Grief, hope, fear, and ardour inextricably bound together, as though these emotions were an inseparable ball we were asked to simply kick along the dusty byways of the Fiefdoms until Mata told us otherwise. It made us feel strangely isolated from every Umarite around us, and our dependence on each other therefore became the greater.
Later, I helped P’dáronï rise. She said, “I would appreciate a wash after these days abed. After that …”
“On to Eldoran.”
“On to Eldoran,” she echoed. “On to Eldoran, where it must end.”
Chapter 37: A Sojourn and a Journey
The Faloxx, irredeemable eaters of flesh, are neither Umarite nor Eldrik, but rather a subhuman kind of beast fit for nought but torture eternal in the fiery pits of Nethe.
Soriam al’Fay’d kin Thanen, All That is Holy
Ever northward we travelled along the remote, wild coastline of Hakooi, pausing briefly where we could to spend our coin upon much needed food. I ate like a ravenous jatha, and P’dáronï too, as our bodies sought to account for much sore abuse. Rugged and beautiful was our way, salty and fresh, and little inhabited. We swam freely in the peaceful ocean and rested upon the sands, but never for long. Always, destiny tugged at our grephe-sense.
P’dáronï and I passed the days getting to know every detail of each other’s’ life and beliefs, hopes and fears and dreams, and recounting Janos’ memories as we searched for a way to defeat Jyla.
Briefly we did tarry in Herliki Free Fiefdom on the way. There we were grandly received by the Hassutl Erkiban, together with his three fine sons and his daughter who I mistook for the Hassia K’huylia.
“My dear departed wife,” said the Hassutl. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why she had never again sent for me, when he added, “She was once restored by you, El Shashi. She lived a short but full life and gave me these fine children–well, who are children no longer. It is through faith I believe she did not seek healing again, when the canker returned. She said, ‘It is Mataboon I was granted a second chance at life, a gift I grasped with both hands. Yet should I summon El Shashi hence I shall selfishly deny others access to his services. This I cannot allow.’ Ay, truly told. Such were her words.”
I burshingled deeply and signed the full buskal of Mata’s mercy. I had to pause to force words past my choked-up throat. “Her faith was greater than mine,” I managed. “It was a pearl of beauty unquenchable.”
I believe we all cried then.
After dinner I quietly checked and treated the Hassutl and his children and every member of his palace staff down to the ninety-anna drudge who did little more than push a broom across flagstones a couple of makh a day.
“You were so moved today,” P’dáronï said, stroking my arm in the darkness of our bedchamber. She had no need of light. “Why?”
“I lived here over two anna,” I replied. “I grew to know and love K’huylia well.”
“Love?”
“As a dear friend,” said I, regretting my choice of words. “I’m happy to share my memories if you wish, P’dáronï. I’ve nothing to hide … er, if you discount my antics with a few noblewomen. Which I’m not proud of.”
“Pretty ones?”
“Not one of whom could hold a candle to you,” I said stoutly, showing her I spoke truth. She had been teasing, but only partly …
But I noticed she held me especially close that night.
Ay, I reflected quietly. I had not excelled at commitment in my lifetime. Far from it. Those ghosts haunted me now. Perhaps I should treat P’dáronï of Armittal as I meant to go on–as she deserved, truly told. A germ of an idea took root in my mind.
By a swift sloop, hired by the Hassutl’s palace staff, we zipped along the coast of Herliki in comfort. The captain promised to take us as far as the monastery of Arrakbon, the very last settlement before the Faloxxian territories. After Arrakbon the waters became treacherous, the start of the Straits of Nxthu that culminated in a three-ocean melting pot at the northerly tip of Faloxxir–the famed passage of which my father knew the secret, and was described in a scroll secreted somewhere amongst Orik’s writings back in Roymere. No use in picking up lost jatha droppings. We would enter Faloxxir on foot, and trust to P’dáronï’s Warlock skills if the worst happened. No doubt the fierce Faloxx would be keeping their cooking pots warm!
The weather was fine and the breeze beneficent, filling our sails day after day as we traversed the enormous Gulf of Erbon. To our right hand the shore turned to mountains. I for one was glad not to have to cross the broken-toothed Loibrak Range, which protected southern and middle Hakooi from the Faloxx to the north.
After all these anna, I rocked upon these placid waters with a woman I loved! What a change from when I had been forced to flee Eldoran before. History had turned full circle.
The crew was warm and friendly toward us, especially after I healed their ship’s boy of a terrible affliction: perhaps the severest case of eczema I have ever encountered. P’dáronï and I whiled away the makh aboard ship discussing what we might possibly achieve against Jyla. Our plan was to return undetected to Eldoran, if at all possible, and speak first of all to Eliyan. We discussed the amulet Amal had gifted me those twenty anna before, but decided against trying to use it, even if only to detect where she might be. We could hardly hope to wrest her from Jyla. We did not want to disclose our position. She might indeed have been converted by force or trickery to Jyla’s side. The less Jyla knew of us, the better–and now that the Wurm was no longer chasing us, we hoped she could no longer track us either. We trawled through Janos’ memories at enormous length. Although we discovered much arcane knowledge of use and interest, it was the structure and undoing of the Banishment that was our primary goal–and we were no nearer to grasping that than we might have sought to grasp the sun Belion from the deck of our ship.
“Perfectly disgusting genius!” P’dáronï declared, after another warm afternoon spent, shipboard, in fruitless examination of the Banishment’s elements. “Could Janos not have left us just one little chink in the armour to work with?”
“Jyla escaped the Banishment.”
“Oh, yes, we should just ask her how it’s done. Even she was unable to break the Banishment, and not for want of trying!”
“Fastidious, obsessive, brilliant Janos.” I shook my head despondently. “Do we simply accept Talan’s interference sounds the death-knell for all those Banished Eldrik?”
“Do we just get the Wurm to eat Jyla?”
“I’d prefer to turn her into a Wurm.”
“A small one that could get eaten by a porker,” suggested P’dáronï.
I chuckled. “She’d still infect the meat like a tapeworm.”
She made a face. “We Armittalese don’t eat pork anyway. It’s unclean. Disgusting. If only we could get through you to tap the power of the Wurm!”
“Ay. But Eliyan said that ability is limited to Jyla herself. We know the Portal is the only way to cross the Banishment spell. The only way into Birial. Unless we break the never-ending storm, those Eldrik will never get home.”
“Maybe the Wurm can break the Banishment.”
But that would involve me getting to Birial first, I almost started to say. It solved nothing to do with Jyla. The Wurm’s power would still be hers to misuse as she wished.
I had other plans for the morrow. But I kept those thoughts hidden beneath the inmost layers of my Dissembling.
Arrakbon Monastery was an ancient fortress set a few hundred paces back from the edge of a towering cliff-face that caught Suthauk’s early rays as though it were a palace wall of staggering dimensions spanning the spaces between gigantic, glistening columns of mauve fromite. P’dáronï instinctively clasped my hand and through me, gazed wordless at this wonder.
In the golden late afternoon of that wind-still day we walked hand-in-hand through the monastery vineyards with Father Sohirik and five of the Arrakbon Brothers to a small garden set right upon the cliff’s edge. I own we made for a handsome couple, but there was no-one else present to remark upon it save for the beatifically smiling monks who would witness our troth, pledge, and vow.
Here, the Father would read the Holy Matabond over us.
I felt as nervous as a dragonfly skating over a pond full of frogs.
P’dáronï wore an antique bridal gown of Sulmian silk the same colour as the Gulf of Erbon, which soughed against the cliff’s base half a league below us. The train alone was twenty paces long, and every last dyndigit of material was hand-sewn in the finest lace of Herliki. Upon her brow she wore a Hassutla’s nuptial coronet, and her hair had been dressed by one of the monks in a fanciful swirl about her head, held in place by clips shaped to resemble miniature starfish, which were encrusted with aquamarine diamonds from the famed mines of Hallidoon. Even with my background in trading I would have been unable to estimate the value of her raiment; but to me, it was the person within that outshone all.
I wore simple blue bruke-trousers cut mid-calf and a flowing shirt of Sulmian silk which perfectly matched P’dáronï’s outfit, except it was unexpectedly heavy as according Hakooi tradition, the groom wears five layers upon his upper body–for fidelity, honour, praise to Mata, thanks, and love for his beloved. Also in the Hakooi tradition, we were both barefoot, as benefitted our position as suppliants to Mata’s good favour upon our union.
This was my surprise to P’dáronï. At the makh of daimi orison the day before, I had surprised her. Truly told, she had almost swooned when I presented her the bridal gown in the traditional way upon bended knee, begging her to consent to wear it just once.
She looked radiant.
“I call upon these witnesses five, and the witness of Holy Mata,” Father Arrakbon intoned, taking our left hands in his, before bringing them together before him. “I bind these two persons wrist to wrist, pulse to pulse, life to life, with a cord of Gethamadi silk. This symbolises the troth of handfasting, and the desire of two persons to join their lives; quath, quatl and quoph; heart and eternal soul; that their spirits shall nevermore rove restless upon the winds of life.”
P’dáronï and I had decided to incorporate elements of the Umarik, Eldrik, and Armittalese traditions into our ceremony. The good Father had not even raised an eyebrow at this request, but accepted our scroll with a nod and a smile. He said, ‘Do you happen to know a Father Yatak of the Solburn Brothers?’ It so happened a Solburn brother had visited recently to initiate the process of building a hospital which would serve even the Faloxx, funded by our family’s bequest.
Ay, life is full of wonders.
Having tied our wrists together with a ceremonial knot, Father Sohirik began to sign the buskals of matrimony. “The buskal of Mata’s peace protect your quophs. May this buskal symbolise Her mercy upon your lives and all your endeavours together. Here is the buskal of love unending upon you Arlak, and upon you, P’dáronï. May the knot I form in this cord symbolise the strength of your union, which shall never be broken.”
And so we spoke even as the Father spoke, exchanging vows deeper than words.
A scroll rustled briefly as Father Sohirik referred to the wording of the Eldrik vows. Through our link, I knew that P’dáronï was following my responses as closely as I was watching her face, to the exclusion of all else.
The Father cleared his throat slightly. “Repeat after me:
Soul to soul as sun to sun,
Two eternal beings become as one,
Unite us in the vows of love,
I with thee: P’dáronï of Armittal,
I with thee: Arlak of Yarabi Vale,
Our souls entwine with bonds, o Mata, of love divine.”
I reached up to unpin P’dáronï’s hair. “Let what we loose this day be loosed forever. Let what we vow be bound forever, thrice-fold, before Mata and before Man. This is my vow. P’dáronï of Armittal, my gift to you is this necklace of Mataflower. Let it symbolise my vow and pledge. I place it around your neck, where it shall rest upon the pulse of your life. From this day on you will be my life. This is my vow.”
Her white-blonde hair, unbound, fell in a glorious cascade of ringlets about her shoulders and down her back. If anything, it had grown since that day I first fell headlong–literally, I chuckled, letting her see that picture in my mind’s eye–for her. My fingers trembled over the clasp of the necklace but I finally managed to clip it securely.
“Clasp your right hands above the left,” whispered Father Sohirik. I did wonder if he was as taken with the occasion as we were. “Here, P’dáronï.”
With a ring clasped in her fingers, she touched my hand to find my right thumb. She said, “Let what we encircle this day be ours forever. Let what we vow be bound forever, thrice-fold, before Mata and before Women. This is my vow.”
There was a rustle as one of the monks stepped forward to present her with a square of cloth, in which was wrapped her gift. Drawing forth a Matabond bracelet, P’dáronï said, “Arlak Sorlakson of Yarabi Vale, my gift for you is this Mata-torc of linnite crystal. Let it symbolise my vow and pledge. I place it around your right wrist, where it shall rest upon the pulse of your life. From this day on you will be my life. This is my vow.”
Linnite for purity and fidelity, a costly crystal bought in the blood of slaves from the mines of Ummandor, the Armittalese homeland. It was our deliberate choice, and for me, another layer of a vow I had not yet expressed to P’dáronï. Freedom for the slaves.
She was far defter with the clasp than I.
The monks helped P’dáronï move forward and kneel upon a low cushion but one pace from the cliff edge. I knelt beside her, crossing my left arm across my body to keep our bound wrists between us, and again, we clasped hands. She paused to dab a teardrop from her cheek before taking my hand a second time, rather fiercely I thought.
“Oe’e lorai yohii,” she said, in Old Armittalese. “Lorai P’dáronï luhi Arlak hetnï-olnï Mahethï. Shoelna ohiri-ay-ohiri emmasti.”
“The vows of eternal oneness,” I repeated after her. “I, Arlak, do solemnly vow before the face of Mata, to receive this woman P’dáronï and fly with her, spirit-indwelling-spirit, until this world is no more.”
“Mahethï, oe’e yethiyit-on.” Mata, we are wife and husband.
“Mata, we are husband and wife.”
Following the pulse of her thought, I narrowed my eyes against the golden face of Suthauk lowering toward the far horizon. The lillia of magic? There was something flying toward us at our level. “What is that?”
I stared over the ocean, and P’dáronï through me, hardly daring to breathe. It was the sound of the monks dropping to their knees behind us and to either side that allowed me to recognise what I was seeing–a blue condor. The embodiment of Mata’s presence in the world. Her seal upon our vows.
The monks began to hum behind us, lost in worship o
f Mata.
The very next dawn we set foot in Faloxxir.
Cannibal country. Home to the painted barbarian hordes, the fiercest of the Umarite tribes, neither owned nor loved by anyone, and in my lifetime, savage raiders across the northern parts of Hakooi all the hundreds of leagues into Roymere. Those who had tortured, murdered and eaten my parents.
And Mata’s way would have me love even these?
“The sins of your graven flesh?” said P’dáronï, following my thoughts perfectly. “I am Matabound to a member of the Sy Faloxx tribe?”
“An honorary member, but if you keep teasing me, I propose to have you for a snack, my delectable wife. You kept me awake last night–in a most delightful way.”
“Can a woman not be excited about her nuptials? Better a sore head next morn than lying awake next to a snoring lout. Heal yourself, El Shashi!”
“Of unwarranted grumpiness?” Behind us lay the snow-capped Loibrak peaks; simply breathtaking in the fiery sunrise of a Sowing season morning. Beauty behind, beauty at my side, and fear to the fore. I pulsed this to P’dáronï.
This was a new mental space. Mark my words, in the ever-polite, highly stratified Eldrik society, I had never once imagined them throwing insults about–only Pedyk, he who had been banished. “I do trust you, P’dáronï-nevsêsh …”
“Then demonstrate it!”
“My fierce and fiery beloved–I do not wish to rid this land of Faloxx. I wish to heal them. There’s a difference.”
She paused to consider this. “And would you heal a Jyla? Is it even possible to heal a malady of the soul? Does Mata create evil? Or does she simply allow it to leach from Ulim’s throne like some miasmic mist?”
I shivered lightly as a shadow crossed my quoph, remembering the demon-possessed man I had once tried to wipe clean and restore to wholeness–rather, to bend him to my imperfect image of wholeness. “I too have supped from Ulim’s table in my lifetime, P’dáronï-nishka. Far be it from me to judge. Riddle me this, precious wife: what will you now do with Eliyan’s command?”