by Marc Secchia
“P’dáronï?” I gathered my wife in my arms and held her close. “P’dáronï-nevsêsh … beloved, why are you weeping?”
“I dreamed … it was awful.” She took a ragged breath. “Arlak-nihka, would you forgive me a request?”
“Anything.”
“I refused you before, I know, but … no. It is too much to ask.”
“Your sight,” I realised. “I’d be only too willing to try, P’dáronï-nishka. You crossed the Fiefdoms for me. What’s a couple of eyeballs compared to that?”
“But I’ve little courage in this. Or hope.”
I searched her face. “You’ve changed your mind?”
“Arlak-nevsê. I know you better now. I know what you can do. And … I just have the oddest feeling that I don’t want to return to Eldoran as I was. Great and terrible things may happen there, and so I need to be able to see. To be of use. Not to have to rely on seeing through your eyes alone. What do you think?”
“It’d be a difficult operation,” I answered, rather slowly as I churned the idea about in my brain, “perhaps the most difficult I have ever attempted. The eye is a complex organ. I would somehow need to encourage it to grow back whole … using a technique I’ve sensed you use. I don’t know if this ability is unique to the Armittalese? But when you regrew the skin of my stomach you did it … in an amazing way. This time, you could be my teacher. We have little time. We’ll arrive in Eldoran in three days.”
She let out a gust of air she had been holding. “But do you think it’s the right thing to do, Arlak-mine?”
I nodded, knowing she would sense the movement even in the dark. “Ay. Now there’s a question for the yammariks. I believe Mata intends for wholeness and restoration. Whether in this life or the next–that I cannot say. But it is perhaps the greatest gift I could think to give you, a gift I have many times over the anna yearned to give you but withheld, out of love and respect, because you were not ready.”
“Now I am ready.” P’dáronï placed her hand in mine.
And I worked the rest of the night.
That following day we helped ourselves to the clothes freely offered at the shelter. I took for myself the hooded hassock of a manservant and P’dáronï added an Eldrik travelling cloak and proper slippers to her outfit. She would play a noblewoman fallen upon hard times, and I her manservant. We found her a slender cane beside the fireplace and turned it into her stick, commonly used by the blind community in Eldoran. We took two purple scarves to clothe her distinctive hair in the colour of mourning, and tied a bandage made of the cloth of a linen shirt over her eyes. Now, we hoped, people would not look too hard beyond the bandage and her mourning colours. I had her practice a hunched-over walk. By this artifice I hoped to detract from her unusual height amongst the slender, petite Eldrik women. And with our finest Dissembling in place, with our stories honed to display in the casual parts of our minds to the curious via the gyael-irfa, we embarked on the final leg of our journey toward Eldoran.
Within the makh we came upon a merchant travelling up from Eldoran. We drew aside upon the wayside at once.
“Good master, alms for a poor widow,” I begged, raising and lowering my hand in the approved way. After a moment, a coin clinked on the worn paving stone near my feet.
“Mataboon!” called the trader.
“Bless thee, kind master! Mata smile upon thee.”
“It worked,” said I, pocketing the small coin. “That’s the price of bread, right?”
“Twenty anna ago,” P’dáronï retorted. “Keep your wits sharp and the onion deep.”
“Ay, mistress.”
“Ooh, I much prefer this arrangement to being the slave. Now, how can I best exploit my manservant?”
“I’ve a modest list of suggestions–”
P’dáronï whacked my kneecap with her cane, making me yelp more in surprise than pain. “I’ll be giving the orders, you bumbling simpleton!”
As we travelled along I allowed P’dáronï to rest upon my arm. This gave me freedom to continue working upon her eyes and for her to see through mine. The optic nerve was proving particularly challenging. I could not work out why the signals from the retina refused to reach her brain. I must have made a mistake … quietly, we explored this problem together for the rest of the day.
The following day we caught up with a trader called Lithan who had ten carts full of thorrick-hay bales bound for Eldoran in his train. He allowed us to hitch a ride with him in the foremost cart. For an Eldrik he was a jovial fellow, and while I was wont to relax a little, P’dáronï pulsed me sharply to reinforce the layers of my Dissembling onion. Grumbling inwardly, I did so.
While we jounced along at a jatha’s pace P’dáronï questioned him about happenings in Eldoran. I noticed she did not once touch upon a sensitive topic. Her questions were all about prices, places to stay, trends in the Weavers guild, and the arts, while she dropped small hints about the fictional relatives we would be staying with and her sorrow at her dear husband’s untimely death. I secretly felt it a little early for my wife to be doing away with me, even for a story!
But after a lunchtime repast of fruits and the ubiquitous Eldrik lahi-bread, which his wife had made dense, nutty, and altogether delicious, Lithan volunteered news which jolted us to the core.
“Day after tomorrow’s a big Banishment in the capital, y’know,” Lithan said in his broad countryside accent, as if this were a cheerful event for all the family to enjoy. “They finally caught the biggest jatha of the lot, y’know. Eliyan, ex-First Councillor of the Sorcerers. Y’know, plotting against the gyael-irfa an’ suchlike. ‘Tis an awful bad thing, y’honoured lady.”
“Oh, that is terrible,” P’dáronï said primly, making the common sign against evil. “Such a criminal.”
“Y’know they reformed those others but not him–not that … ‘scuse me, mistress, I was about to swear y’know. Not Eliyan. No, he’s for the Banishment. Him and some others. A few bad Inquisitors, they say. Got to keep the gyael-irfa pure an’ suchlike, y’know. Can’t have his like being poison in the lake.”
“Banishment is good, master trader,” I muttered from my side, trying not to grind my teeth together too audibly. “When’s it being done?”
“Like I said, y’know, day after tomorrow. Noon in the square. As always.”
The trader nodded sagely. We were all good, innocent Eldrik. We would not taint the gyael-irfa.
I turned my strength and power upon P’dáronï’s ruined orbs all that day long, accelerating the growth of retinal cells and membranes and clear, unclouded lenses at such a rate that tears streamed from her eyes. I had to dull the pain, but not too much or the growth would be retarded. I kept returning to the detail of my own eyes to try to understand and copy what was required. I still had not solved the problem of the optic nerve. P’dáronï had to change the bandage over her eyes several times as it became sodden.
In the evening, we quietly forged a desperate plan. P’dáronï was adamant that without the strength of Eliyan those Sorcerers who remained would rapidly fall to Jyla’s cohorts and be overwhelmed, being forced to join her or be Banished. Therefore we either needed to free Eliyan beforehand, or be present at his Banishment. He would be detained in the Pentacle. Home of the Inquisitors, it was more a prison than a Guild. Although I remembered only tiny flashes in my darkest nightmares, that was where I had been held and tortured. So that left us the road between the Pentacle and the square … and the ceremony itself.
But first, we needed to gain Eldoran.
Come dawn, when we emerged from our pretty holia, discreetly hidden beneath a flower-covered mound at the wayside, the trader and his carts were gone. They had vanished, without leaving any tracks, as though a godlike hand had erased them from existence. In their place stood some twenty or twenty-five Sorcerers clad in their black sherimol cloaks. The morning mist wreathed their forbidding forms in menace. Behind them was a thicket of spears. Soldier
s, no telling how many in the mist, to back up with iron what magic might not accomplish.
With one accord P’dáronï and I drew together.
“Well,” she breathed, “I assume we were expected.”
I did not know whether to laugh or howl. “I assume you can’t snap your fingers and turn them into a posse of warty toads?”
P’dáronï made a show of pursing her lips. “A few cockroaches at best.”
The picture she supplied was akin to a macabre porker’s breakfast. I gulped. Now I could see the skin of a huge bubble shimmering above us, a kind of membrane that appeared to flex and tremble very slightly at the breath of wind stirring the mists.
I replied:
“It might as well be death if Jyla wins.” P’dáronï shook her head.
One of the Sorcerers stepped forward, passing inside the barrier though a portal briefly opened by his fellows. Spreading his cloak and taking an arrogant stance, he shouted: “Surrender, intruders! You are outnumbered and overmatched!”
“Silence, you infidel!” thundered the Sorcerer. “You are guilty of Dissembling! Guilty of grieving the unity of the sacred gyael-irfa!”
“You blundering numbwit!” I roared back, throwing P’dáronï a startled glance as my voice blasted forth at a tremendous volume–obscuring the trembling rapidly escalating beneath my feet. “I hold the source of the Sorceress Jyla’s power! I bring it to her for use against the enemies of the Eldrik, against those who would destroy our unity from within! Can you not feel the Web of Sulangi about me? Are you blind to the ocean of lillia at my fingertips?”
On cue I suddenly found myself glowing from head to toe in glorious violet lillia.
“Shall I spare a fraction of time to wipe you and your petty band of fools from the racial memory forever?”
P’dáronï’s rich laughter filled our shared mental space as she watched him through me.
The Sorcerer glanced rapidly over his shoulder at a shout of alarm from his fellows.
I saw horns in the mist. Horns! Beside me, P’dáronï gave a low cry of amazement. The rumbling we had taken for an unexpected rising of the Wurm resolved itself into the thunder of untold thousands of head of jerlak stampeding toward the band of dumbfounded Sorcerers and their backing soldiers. Speech was impossible; the world shook and we shook with it.
How pitiful they now seemed to me! Several Sorcerers and Warlocks teleported rapidly, but not far enough–screams rose near and far. Metal crashed against metal, and horn against metal. I saw a black robe flipped into the air. He fell amongst the heaving bodies and disappeared. Fire flared in the mist. Jerlak bellowed and converged on the spot in a fatal, seething tide, swamping the Warlock who had dared to attack them. His screams of agony were chopped short.
Suddenly, without warning, a great beast stamped before us, his breath steaming in twin geysers from his nostrils in the cool morning air. He was as white as sea-spume. He shook his dewlap and, with a toss of his mighty horn, bellowed his welcome.
P’dáronï shrank against my side. I am afraid I was shrinking against her!
I wrenched forth my shrinking tongue and exclaimed, “Thurbarak! White thundering mountain!”
Lowering his head, the great bull fixed me with his gaze. We meet again, El Shashi. His voice filled my mind with its presence and a sense of deep, abiding calm. He turned to regard P’dáronï with all the ageless wisdom of his gaze. Well met, Star of the Ammilese March. She bowed deeply in the Armittalese way of highest respect, from the waist with her arms raised straight behind her, almost as if she were preparing to dive into a pool of water. We must ride for Eldoran. This is my son Thurmagor, and my daughter Hoyibarak. They will bear you hence.
I shook my head as a man trapped in a dream. After helping P’dáronï scramble up onto Hoyibarak’s back, I pulled myself aboard Thurmagor with the help of his lowered left horn, which was the thickness of my thigh at its base. He was scarcely a handspan shorter than his father, and even thicker through the shoulders, if that were possible. He looked as though he could gore his way through mountains.
We ride!
And the jerlak rumbled forward to join the dense press of their herd.
We were as a Hassutl and Hassutla being borne forth in their utmost majesty, I thought, only this was a carriage finer and more astonishing than anything I could have imagined. We floated in a sea of jerlak horns, heads and backs. The huffing and snorting of the jerlak created a rolling fog-bank above the herd, the sheer number of animals fogging up the air as though they sought to draw a blanket of silence and secrecy about us. P’dáronï and I were awed into a silence of our own. And always there was an underlying reverberation of myriad hooves upon sod and stone, and sneezes and snorts, and at one point, I fancied it was Thurbarak who bellowed and the entire herd responded in a resounding roar that echoed off the distant hills.
I own we rode this way for six or seven makh, until I thought I began to recognise the smudge of hills cresting the far horizon. The fog had lifted as Suthauk attended us with a fine, humid early afternoon blaze. From my perch above the herd I thought I might estimate their number, but I gave up swiftly. A hundred thousand head? Leagues of jerlak rolling across the land like the restless waves of a dark ocean? And I was unafraid!
By what magic had they crossed the Straits of Nxthu?
Was this every jerlak in Mata’s creation come to give us aid?
The jerlak did not pause to crop a single blade of grass or strip a tasty bush bare. There was a firm sense of purpose about them, a pressing forward with fortitude and urgency. As I mulled this in my mind I spotted the white head of Thurbarak approaching through the massed bodies, which melted and slid around him as though he were a white fish slipping through an ocean of brown and black.
Eldoran lies beyond the hills. Another five makh at this speed. The herd is slowing. We are tired, having followed you all these leagues from the waters of the young Nugar.
I half-turned to P’dáronï to repeat this, but she pulsed that she had understood.
“Great One, why did you help us?”
Is it not enough that it is? We follow Mata. The black robe is not content with dominion over her own kind. Already her Warlocks test our strength and hunt the jerlak for sport. And after that? She would play with the very Gods. There is an Eldrik army mustering outside the city. You will whisper by them as the mist of the morning. We will teach them the lessons of hoof and horn.
Following P’dáronï’s thought, I said, “The Banishment–”
Is prepared for today, for the makh before sunset. You must run ahead, man who Mata granted a tygar’s legs and a wolf’s stamina.
At this, Hoyibarak and Thurmagor slowed to let us dismount. I stretched my aching legs, thinking that I should have known the trader was lying. Or had Jyla moved up the schedule, anticipating our arrival? We would discover the truth soon enough.
Lifting P’dáronï upon my back, I said, “Great One … words fail me.”
Call us as you have need. Our horns are sharp and many.
And I sprang away across the long meadow muddied by thousands of hooves; for the second time in my life, through a path that opened between the great jerlak for us. They did not bow as to
their lord Thurbarak, but instead, as we broke free of the foremost animals, raised such a bellowing and lowing chorus that I felt fairly blasted by hurricane winds from behind.
Now, the run to Eldoran. The last leg of our enormous journey.
Not for nothing did the ulules call me The Running Man, I thought, gritting my teeth. I must prove them right.
Chapter 39: The Dark Isle
Lucanism and Ulim-worship, I own they are one.
Faliyan of Eldoran, Legacy
As we marched rapidly through the streets of Eldoran I was struck by a sense of desolation, as though the city had been stripped of its soul. The perfection was still staggering. Not a leaf or grass blade or bush was out of place. Every house shone as brightly as a newly minted Lortiti Real. Here a fanciful snail-shell, there a structure buried in flowering vines, here a house curved delicately about the enormous trunk of a shenbik tree, which bears three different types of fruit, each in its season. The paths between the meandering gardens had not only been brushed, but polished until the paving stones gleamed. It was easy to imagine no foot had ever touched them. The harmonious fusion of the whole pleased the eye. But where were the voices of children playing, hounds baying, and matrons calling to their friends across the street? Where were the enticing smells of food cooking and dark young beauties strolling along beneath pretty parasols in search of a young buck’s head to turn, as I recalled? Surely Jyla could not have forced every citizen of Eldoran to attend the ceremony of Banishment? The square was physically too small …
“They left,” P’dáronï said, answering my silent question. “And Jyla fetched back those she wanted and pressed them into her service, or Banished them. The Dark Isle must be filled to bursting by now.”
And Jyla still kept up this travesty of perfection?
We saw few people. They were close-hooded and bowed of head despite the late afternoon’s warmth. They cast us furtive, distrusting glances as they hurried about their business.