The Legend of El Shashi

by Marc Secchia

  “It’s not working,” I said to Amal.

  “These aren’t enough?”

  “They require little power,” I explained. “When I am efficient, like this, it gives little to the Wurm. I need … greater needs, for example–”

  “–the Transformed,” she finished for me.

  “Ay.”

  Unconsciously, as though I were still a monk, I signed the full buskal of Mata’s peace. Not only did Amal look like me, her thoughts aligned with mine too.

  Amal took my arm excitedly. “I can help. I can shield you, Arlak-nih. We’ll go down into one of those caves near the beach …”

  “The light is starting to fade.”

  “We’ve a makh yet. Wait for me!”

  Amal and I paced each other down the beach path, urgently throwing ideas about. We needed to know how I would touch the Transformed and still remain protected. Truly told, or how I would accomplish healings without losing my hand in the bargain?

  If the Wurm could come to the beach. If I could touch the Wurm and force it to expel the Portal. If the Sorcerers could capture the Portal … and keep it from Jyla … I shook my head. This plan was madness. But it was our only plan. We had never reckoned on having to deal with Jyla at Birial Island. Banishing her–what a shock! What had my wife wrought?

  And yet, if she had prophetically seen the future, could it be that Mata’s hand might be discerned in P’dáronï’s Banishing Jyla, too?

  All too soon we stood outside a cave. A waft of dank air ruffled our hair.

  “Keep close,” she said. “Better yet, let’s tie our wrists together.”

  “Ay.” I tore a strip off of my cloak and bound our hands as she had suggested. “Are you certain you know–”

  My sister made a rude noise in her throat. “I’m quite certain I could blast you from here to Eldoran, Arlak-nih. Now stop baiting me and get inside that cave.”

  “Amal-nish, I–”

  “Before I kick you within.”

  I smiled weakly at her joke. I would rather have walked down the Wurm’s gullet than enter that cave. How many gantuls had I not regretted my original cowardice, which had spelled Janos’ doom? I nodded. “Follow me, Sorceress–if you dare.”

  As we slipped down that narrow, slick tunnel beneath the earth, Amal sent a small point of light ahead of us. I had a moment to wonder how much she missed mental communication via the gyael-irfa, which the Banishment nullified, before I began to detect movement at the periphery of our light. The Transformed were not far from the entrance of the cave. Perhaps they had been gathering as the light faded.

  “A few paces more,” said Amal. Her fingers squeezed mine tightly.

  The Transformed shifted back from her light, but only slightly. It would scarcely burn them. Hairy limbs, scaly backs, tails that slithered away behind rocks; everywhere, claws scratching and scrabbling in the darkness. The cavern was much larger and deeper than I had suspected. Great Mata, there was only a slight shimmering in the air between me and a messy death! My mind calmly evaluated the situation around me, while my heart did its level best to climb out of my throat and bolt for safety.

  The first creature I touched, I had to heal twice. Once to become a man. The second when he was instantly disembowelled by a creature I had not even seen in the darkness. After that Amal managed to ‘bubble’ him into our shield–her word, not mine.

  “Go to Sanctuary,” I ordered him. Naked, he ran out of the cave.

  Amal’s scolding me was cut short as the Transformed flung themselves at our shield.

  We worked fast, purely by gut instinct; Amal and I were of one mind, and although the assault staggered us, we managed to un-transform the Transformed and snatch them away from their fellows at a ferocious rate. Grimly I reached beyond the shield, again and again. Even a small touch was enough. Some we lost, heads torn off or hearts penetrated by unseen spines or claws, but we sent a steady stream of Eldrik up the tunnel to safety–if they could reach Sanctuary in time.

  I gasped, “The Wurm’s moving now!”

  “I know,” said Amal. “You need to overwhelm both the Karak and the Portal, Arlak. Keep going.”

  We dealt with another couple of dozen monsters before there was suddenly a lull. Had we cleaned out the cave?

  “I’m sending out an eye. Move on, brother-mine.”

  Cautiously, I moved deeper into the cave. The tunnel snaked about. Twice, Transformed leaped out at us from crevices hidden amongst the shadows. Bellows and cackles called more of their fellows to the fight. In a moment, the tunnel filled again.

  I sighed. “Could they not have Banished less Eldrik?”

  “The Wurm’s near the shore,” Amal reported. Her voice sounded strained. Rapidly, she bubbled several more naked, shivering men and women behind the shield. “I see … Karak, satiated, dropping off the Wurm. But … oh, dear Mata!” We staggered at a particularly violent assault. “Jyla still rides high and leads the Karak.”

  Amal and I worked up a fine sweat, aggressively picking off the Transformed and healing them. I felt the Wurm move again. “More!” I gasped. We moved down the tunnel. I healed my hands, torn by a beast with four wings and a crocodile’s teeth. I reached out with both hands now, deep into a knot of Transformed that snarled and scrabbled at our shield.

  “Oh … Arlak! The Wurm!”

  I felt it through my feet, through the trembling of the cavern. “Strength, Amal!” I flung my power into her. Outside, a tremendous concussion shook the earth. Darkness descended instantly. Sand cascaded down around us, pouring over the shield; boulders dropped from the ceiling and smashed around us. We heard the Transformed cry out. “It’s right above us!” I shouted. “Quickly! Deeper!”

  We dashed away as the tunnel collapsed behind us. Dust exploded in our faces. The earth groaned and cracked. Then all went still.

  We were trapped.

  Amal’s light flickered out weakly. She staggered. I saw blood on her forehead, trickling through her fingertips.

  I also saw that we stood in the middle of a large cavern. There had to be a thousand Transformed circled around us–slithering over the rocks, lurking in the shadows, hanging by their claws from the ceiling–at least, that was what speared into my quoph before Amal’s light flickered and went out. We plunged into blackness.

  Flesh pounded me to the ground. I spread myself deliberately over my sister, and tried somehow to fight–but I own their sheer numbers worked against them. Stuck in the middle of that pile of monstrous limbs, scaly hides and barbed wings, the Transformed could not reach through their fellows to attack us. But we were in severe danger of being crushed. I dived into Amal, healing her wound and helping her mind clear. She trembled, beneath me, and suddenly I felt as though iron bolstered my flesh.

  “Body shield,” said Amal.

  “Gah!” I replied, feeling teeth gnawing the bones of my ankle.

  “What now?”

  “Get ready to bubble them in with us?”

  “Ah … surely one or two will be Sorcerers,” Amal said, doubtfully. “Arlak–this power is feeding Jyla. She has grown larger. But I see Karak burning off the Wurm’s body with the concentration of lillia leaking through the creature’s carapace. And the storm rages greatly, taking many Karak with it.”

  The beginnings of a crazy plan sprang into my head. Somewhere above us, the Great Wurm’s bellow vibrated the entire island.

  “Burning off?”

  “Too much lillia, perhaps.”

  “We have to get out there, Amal-nish.”

  “Ay. Then get healing, brother-mine.”

  Steadily, we increased our domain beneath the pile of Transformed. Men and women joined us beneath the shield, dark-eyed and frightened people; people who knew little of where they were or what was happening. But one at last joined hands with Amal to lend his strength to the shield, and then another declared herself a Warlock, and they somehow squeezed all of us out from beneath the pile. We fought to a cavern wall, then to a tunnel, gathering numb
ers all the while. Above us, the Wurm thundered again.

  And a huge rockfall buried our shield.

  “The Wurm’s trying to find me!”

  My voice echoed in the darkness. A light snapped into being, cradled between the Warlock’s hands. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “We’re trying to defeat Jyla and break the Banishment,” said Amal. The Warlock’s eyes became round. “That’s El Shashi’s pet up there. A Wurm.”

  “Then go that way,” said another Eldrik, pointing. “I feel air on my cheek.”

  Slowly, scrambling over boulders and moving those we could not squeeze past, our little party crawled upward to the surface of Birial. We had to keep shielded. But as Torbin had warned, the use of a shield or magic attracted the Transformed as moths to a candle. Night was falling, and the calls of the Transformed already echoed around the island, when they were not drowned out by the Wurm’s thunders.

  In the gathering gloom the battlefield loomed before us. We emerged near the top of a steep rise, able to gaze over the Wurm’s massive, ridged back to the ocean beyond. The rocks were bare out there. Bare, all the way to the glowing blue Banishment storm, which now raged so powerfully that it must have swept up the seawater with it. The winds shrieked in their everlasting circuit, but where we stood the air remained curiously calm. The remaining Karak heaved themselves across the slick, bare rocks of what had been ocean before. The clouds overhead boiled and bellied, bursting with the immeasurable quantities of magical power forced into them by the Wurm; a world-shaping storm in the making.

  Thousands of Karak still rode the Wurm’s back and sides, but one stood out above them. Jyla, grown many times more enormous than before, a great, pustulent purple sack crowning the Wurm’s head, with blazing eyes the size of jatha-carts that peered over the scene with satisfaction, it seemed to me. Her tentacles gripped the Wurm just behind its mandibles. She had changed colour, I saw, swollen with unimaginable amounts of lillia. The Great Wurm threw back its head and thundered its fury to the skies, but the Sorceress hung on grimly. Her body pulsed with grotesque feeding.

  A tiny group of men and women faced Jyla and the Wurm. Eliyan, I thought, although I could not make him out. The battle was furious. Fire suddenly blazed from Jyla, melting the rocks around that little group and turning their shield orange.

  “We have to help them!”

  I turned to Amal. “Can you move the Portal’s endpoint?”

  She shook her head. “Arlak, whatever do you mean? We need the end within the Wurm. The start point.”

  The Wurm writhed and crashed down again, splintering rocks and casting off dozens of Karak. It was trying to turn to follow me.

  “Get on my back. I’m going to run,” I said. “Sorcerer–get these people to Sanctuary. And prepare to defend it. Once Jyla finishes with the Eldrik down there, she’ll be after the fortress next. She won’t rest until you’re all dead.”

  “Brother-mine …”

  “Listen. We can only move the endpoint, right? I want you to put it inside Jyla.”

  “That will feed her lillia–you mean to explode her, don’t you?”

  “I hope.”

  “Because you think we can’t escape until she’s dead.” Amal’s arms clasped around my neck. “And you’re running where?”

  Amal was much heavier than P’dáronï, but I had once augmented my strength, much as a Wurm may be augmented–another aspect in which my life mirrored Jyla’s creation. Without answering her, I set off in a wide curve around the front of the Wurm’s head and then out across the flat part of Birial, stretching into a dead sprint, making a tremendous pace. From the corner of my eye I saw the Wurm’s head shift to follow my flight. Ay, as yet, the connection was still strong. Its length curved, pressing forward ponderously.

  Near my ear, Amal muttered, “Give me the exact construct, Arlak.”

  I summoned up Janos within me and gasped out a series of words I barely understood the half of.

  The Wurm slithered forward, rolling sideways as my run extended further and further to its left flank. As I had guessed, a creature of no eyes also has no sense of a right orientation, of an upside-down or a right way up. The efficient route would win out.

  The Wurm rolled.

  It rolled away from Eliyan, and over thousands of Karak, literally cleaning its body. With a howl of panic, I pumped my arms and legs. Hajik Hounds, that thing was fast! Once the Wurm started moving, there was so much of it that it could cover trins in a breath, whereas a man must make many steps to cover the same distance.

  “Jyla escaped,” Amal noted matter-of-factly. “She’s smart.”

  “What did she do, fly?”

  “Here we go, Arlak. I shape the magic thus, and initiate it so: Orlio immio Portal.”

  Although Amal’s command was a whisper, it appeared to gather strength as it raced off into the distance. I could not fathom it.

  Skidding around a fast turn, I ran in the opposite direction now. I glanced to my right. The Wurm, rolling clear of Eliyan and his people. Jyla, as a Karak, cast aside in an open space, her strange, beak-like mouth gaping as she apparently tried to ingest something.

  “Now we feed her.”

  “There.” Amal pointed past my shoulder at the black mouth of a cave, already growing teeth and claws as the Transformed crept out into the gloaming. “Have I told you this is insanity?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  My passenger leaped down lightly beside me and took my hand. “I’m with you, Arlak-nih.”

  The Transformed did not wait for our fearless approach. They fell upon us with slavering fangs, braving the last of the natural light–although, truly told, the storm glowed so brightly now that the suns were no longer needed. This unnatural light did not burn them. I reached out and grappled with the rush of animals. Limb, tentacle, tail, wing, it mattered nought. What mattered was to stuff the beast Jyla until she burst. By my grephe, I doubted our stratagem would work.

  But we were desperate.

  “Stop peering over your shoulder,” Amal snapped.

  “I need to know what’s happening.”

  What was happening was that the Wurm was shifting–slowly, but irresistibly–in our direction. We had little time left. And Jyla still blasted the Sorcerers and Warlocks with streams of hot white fire from her eyes; they huddled unmoving beneath a shield as she turned the rocks around them into lava. She was so full of lillia that it leaked off her hideous tentacles in a soft violet mist. If I had hoped an overdose should damage a Karak, I was mistaken. Jyla simply absorbed the power; she expanded visibly each time I dared to glance back. She heaved her bulk closer to the trapped Birial Islanders. She would crush them beneath a mountain of cold, rubbery flesh if we did not change the odds.

  Here came the Transformed, flitting into the sky in great clouds of bat-like creatures, scooting and bounding across the ground, slithering and rolling along Birial’s bleak fields. Such a multitude! So many Banished, cleansed from among the Eldrik, that they covered the earth and the skies in a dark tide of corrupt humanity. Would they attack Jyla or the Wurm?

  Amal tugged my arm. “We’ll be overwhelmed. We need to retreat to Sanctuary.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No? You numbwit, what … Arlak?”

  “We must ride the Wurm.”

  Chapter 43: Almighty Failure

  Birial, island of a binding mist,

  Which all does twist,

  Even success,

  Fails.

  Faliyan of Eldoran: Legends, 2nd Tale: True Foundations

  As we levitated over the battle scene, Amal could not resist dropping a bundle of arm-long hornets atop the purple Karak hauling itself uphill towards Birial’s cowering defenders. Our friends crept backward, slowly, struggling somehow to keep from being grilled by the Sorceress’ potent attacks. The hornets attacked hungrily, swarming around Jyla’s blazing eyes, for a moment distracting her into a mess of flailing tentacles. Through a break in her fiery ons
laught, I distinctly saw Eliyan waving his fist and shouting at us.

  Our shield rammed into several flying Transformed.

  “Shape the shield,” I suggested to Amal. Janos’ knowledge was coming easier and easier to me.

  She worked for a moment, so that we sliced through the fliers, and then stared wild-eyed at me. “You’re going to destroy the Portal.”

  “Without it, the Banishment spell should destabilise,” I replied. “At least, the construct Janos has in his mind suggests so.”

  “You’ll kill us all!”

  The Karak’s malicious yellow gaze followed us as we shot over to the Wurm. The burgundy mandibles waved slowly at us, sensing my presence, I felt. Suddenly, Amal swerved. Lightning sizzled past and vanished into the storm.

  “El Shashi!” shrieked the Karak. “You can never destroy me.”

  Her voice, so well-remembered, carried clearly across the Banishment gale’s blustering. As if pricked by her words, the heavens opened in a deluge. Amal’s shield rippled and ran with water. My sister rapidly adjusted her spell, and still had the presence of mind to follow my outthrust finger, aiming for a point high on the Wurm’s head.

  The Sorceress turned, heaving her mountainous black body about, flinging blue lightning from the tip of each tentacle and blasting it from her eyes. The rain hissed; steam was instantly whipped away by the torrents pouring from the skies. We rocked and dipped at the blasts. The wet helped her move better, I realised; but as Amal was ably protecting me, white-faced and gritted of teeth, I could concentrate on what I feared–my first ever touch of the Wurm. Feet extended, I flexed my knees in anticipation of landing. Closer. Closer.

  Lightning scored my vision, followed by a huge concussion. I felt as though we had run headlong into Thurbarak’s herd of jerlak. We flipped over, skidded helplessly across the Wurm’s red carapace, and came to a wrenching stop as Amal somehow hooked one of the deeply scored channels on its skin. Although it felt like an insect’s keratin carapace, the Wurm’s skin underfoot was harder than rock. We rolled over, both ducking instinctively as another titanic bolt of lightning seared a nearby mandible. I was in awe. I stood on the Wurm! After all these anna …